Since 2016, the ends had justified the means in the liberal media’s total war against President Trump as they flaunted their false moral superiority as the sole defenders of democracy and the world. Drunk on their delusions of grandeur and thinking they were protected from defamation claims by New York Times v Sullivan, the liberal media would viciously lash out against anyone they wished with lies and falsehoods, quickly including private citizens. But by 2025, it was clear they had gone too far as they were repeatedly being held accountable by the legal system they thought they were safe from.
For decades, the conventional wisdom was that the bar to prove defamation or even to get the ball rolling on a case against the media was just too much to surmount. But now there have been numerous cases of private citizens like student Nicholas Sandmann, Navy veteran Zachary Young, the family of 9-year-old child Holden Armenta (trial pending), and Dr. Mahendra Amin (who settled with MSNBC) taking bite after bite out of the liberal media.
Then there was the settlement between ABC News and Trump. CBS's parent company Paramount settled their own non-defamation-related case to the tune of $16 million upfront with it possibly reaching upwards of $30 million. The CBS settlement also reportedly resulted in an editorial change at the network in which they will promptly release full and unedited transcripts of future interviews with presidential candidates.
Sandmann seemed to be the beginning of the dam breaking apart. After far-left radical protestors assailed Sandmann and his Covington classmates in front of the Lincoln Memorial after the annual March for Life rally in Washington D.C. in 2019, multiple news outlets targeted the child and smeared him as a racist and lied about him not allowing those assailing him to retreat.
In a flurry of defamation suits, Sandmann sought damages from The Washington Post, CNN, and NBCUniversal to the combined tune of $800 million dollars. Each one of those purported news outlets settled out of court for a confidential amount of money.
Arguably the most substantial result in these efforts to hold the liberal media to account came from Young. After rejecting a settlement offer in September 2024 that would keep the case from going to trial, Young rode the case out through the trial proceeding and came out victorious and vindicated on the other side. CNN was order to pay a combined $5 million in compensatory damages with an undisclosed amount for punitive damages.
Importantly, a jury of CNN’s peers had not only found that CNN had lied about Young but that they also did so with “actual” and “expressed” malice, as evident in their internal messages.
Young’s lead counsel Vel Freedman told NewsBusters of the historic nature of the case:
In part of my closing argument, I said that this is a historic case, this is an opportunity to send a message. And I think - I hope that is the message taken. That, you know, just step back from sensationalized media, report the truth. We want to hear the truth, we want to hear the facts from our media. If you do that, the First Amendment protects you from these sort of results.
Young has since launched defamation suits against Puck News, The Associated Press, and U.S. News and World Report.
Like the Eye of Sauron, even young children weren’t safe from the liberal media’s baleful gaze. In a now-deleted 2023 article on Deadspin, senior writer Carron J. Phillips targeted a little boy at a Kansas City Chiefs game to falsely claim he was racist for wearing black and red face paint (after first falsely claiming he was only wearing blackface). Later that year, the family retained counsel and threatened to sue; and in October of 2024, a judge refused Deadspin’s request to dismiss the case.
Dr. Amin’s case was set to go to trial in April before the parties settled for an undisclosed amount of money. He sued MSNBC for $30 million for defamatory accusation that he was doing medically unnecessary hysterectomies to sterilize illegal immigrant women on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and dubbing him “the uterus collector.” Meanwhile, internal communications inside the network showed skepticism of the claims from the hosts who eventually ran with the story anyway.
Getting by far the most media attention was the $16 million settlement between ABC and Trump, with $15 million of that going towards a future presidential library and $1 million for Trump’s legal fees. Anchor George Stephanopoulos had lied about Trump being found liable for “rape.”
ABC refused to report on their settlement, and so did CBS News which settled their own $16 million suit filed by Trump, who was alleging “deceptive conduct” regarding their election-time 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. CBS did report on their settlement.
Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr sent a letter to CBS demanding the transcript of the interview, which CBS was reportedly complying with. The New York Times also reported that, “Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, strongly supports the company’s effort to settle the lawsuit, the people said.”
MSNBC, then embroiled in their own defamation suit, had the nerve to whine about the “chilling effect” the ABC settlement would have on the media. What about the chilling effect from the liberal media’s defamatory statements against average American citizen who might find themselves in their crosshairs? ‘Don’t support Trump or do anything we think is against our morals, otherwise we’ll ruin you!’
Trump was also in the middle of a defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board for their praise of the Washington Post and New York Times coverage of the Russia Collusion Hoax.
Jury trials might be the best places to hold liberal media accountable for that kind of attitude with reporting.
Judging by the brutal jury questions posed to CNN journalists and editors during the Young trial, the American people were tired of how the liberal media conducts themselves: “‘A chance to make your case to keep your name out of it’ sounds akin to ‘guilty until proven innocent,’ can you clarify how your approach is really the opposite, ‘innocent until proven guilty?’” and “Why, after several examples of Mr. Young cut off communication with people without [corporate] funds, did you still feel as if he was still exploiting Afghans?”
The future seems bright for media accountability.
