ArcaMax

After ABC News settled with Donald Trump for $16 million over George Stephanopoulos incessantly lying about Trump being held "liable for rape," the hot concept in media panic was the "chilling effect."

MSNBC commentator Barbara McQuade lamented "the chilling effect it might have on people who otherwise would be critical of Donald Trump." Is there a shortage of critical statements in the media about Trump? It seems more like the opposite.

CNN anchor Jim Acosta -- the Old Yeller of the White House press corps in the first Trump term -- complained to Brian Stelter: "I have to ask you whether or not you think there's just going to be a chilling effect on the news industry as just as he is coming into office because of this. I mean, I suppose it's almost a rhetorical question because the answer is yes." Stelter agreed.

Trump has sued CBS News for its bizarre edits of their "60 Minutes" softball interview with Kamala Harris, and now the Des Moines Register over their wildly inaccurate poll showing Harris leading in Iowa in the final days -- which was heavily promoted by the pro-Kamala media.

Both the Democrats and their media enablers can't imagine that people see them as the ones who are the Freeze Police of the chilling effect. They're constantly trying to intimidate people from speaking in Trump's favor, describing all their arguments as "misinformation" or "without evidence," and it doesn't matter if they turned out to be true -- like the corruption evidence on the Hunter Biden laptop.

Others have described the suits as part of an "authoritarian playbook." Is the principle here that the media is the epitome of Democracy, so any lawsuit against a media outlet is anti-democratic? Obviously, the answer is no, because they all loved the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News. Because only Democrat news outlets are for Democracy. Only they represent Journalism.

Stelter based much of his second Fox-trashing book on the discovery of internal Fox emails from the Dominion suit. Maybe Brian doesn't fear conservatives writing a book based on the internal ABC emails that Trump's lawyers could have unearthed.

The principle coming from the chilling-effect chorus seems to be incessant aggression matters much more than accuracy. It's essential for journalists to trash Trump constantly, and whether it's accurate or not is seven pages down the list.

Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple marshaled language from the 1991 court case Masson v. The New Yorker that libel law in America "overlooks minor inaccuracies and concentrates upon substantial truth." Do we know E. Jean Carroll is substantially truthful in her claims of department-store sexual assault by Trump? She can't remember what year in the 1990s her "liable for rape" event occurred.

All that matters is aggression. The anti-Trump media always believe the worst about Trump, so they believe Trump "raped" Carroll without needing troublesome facts like what year it was. It doesn't matter if the anti-Trump jury is stacked with Manhattan Democrats. Every legal finding against Trump is routinely presented as super-duper-objective and nonpartisan.

On "Laura Coates Live," Stelter complained lawyers will benefit from Trump's lawsuits, but "everybody else is going to suffer because journalism, because newsrooms, because media outlets are going to be tied up as a result of this effort."

A CNN employee actually complained on CNN that journalists will be "tied up" by court cases without the slightest smirk over how Trump has been perennially tied up in legal actions against him. That whole network sounds like a 24/7 mudslinging advertisement against Trump the "convicted felon." It's a perpetual "chilling effect."

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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