The Trump campaign’s libel lawsuits against The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN mark a dramatic escalation in the president’s long fight with the media.
Legal experts have said the suits are dead on arrival, failing to meet the high bar to prove defamation of a public figure, but they fear an environment in which powerful elected officials try to use the courts to intimidate the press.
“The concern here is not that one of these suits would win on the merits — it’s the chilling effect that it has on public discussion of political affairs,” Jonathan Peters, the Columbia Journalism Review’s press freedom correspondent and a University of Georgia media law professor, told The Hill. Continue reading.