On Monday, PBS News Hour followed NPR's Fresh Air in promoting New York Times reporter David Enrich's anti-Trump book Murder The Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful. Right-wingers from President Trump to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are cartooned as "truth murderers."
Enrich's book is about the Supreme Court precedent in New York Times vs. Sullivan, which is not about "truth," but about setting a very high standard in defamation cases against public figures: you have to prove "actual malice," not merely false reporting.
This was the online headline at PBS:
‘Murder the Truth’ examines growing effort to silence journalists and curtail free speech
Ha! Notice how it echoes the online headline at NPR:
'Murder the Truth' describes a campaign to silence journalists and curb free speech
PBS interviewer William Brangham turned right to Trump: "This is an incredibly well-timed book. I mean, President Trump, obviously, you started it before you knew he would be president, but he has long said that the press protections in this country are far too strict and should be changed." Brangham also underlined Enrich tilts against conservatives: "Your book details a lot of this campaign, principally from right-wing organizations and donors and law firms. Tell us who the characters are here. Who's pushing against this?" This list of characters included Justice Thomas, who PBS and NPR slimed in 1991 with still-unsubstantiated claims of sexual harassment.
Enrich warned that even the right-wingers don't win, their growing skepticism of the Sullivan precedent is impairing the media:
ENRICH: [Y]ou're seeing judges all over the country at the state, in some cases federal level, who are voicing support for this endeavor. And, in doing so, they're causing legal actions that normally would get thrown out of court at a pretty early stage, they last a lot longer. And they are very expensive and time-consuming, not just for journalists and news outlets, but for normal people who maybe circulate a petition about a real estate developer in their town or have a post something on social media that gets them in trouble.
And so it's already causing a really severe chilling effect on the ability of everyone from a normal citizen to someone with a Substack newsletter or podcast to journalists at major news outlets being able to really properly scrutinize and hold powerful people to account.
The notion that anti-Trump journalism is severely chilled right now is a laugh-out-loud argument.
Just like NPR, PBS didn't raise lawsuits against conservative-leaning news outlets, like Fox vs. Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion wasn't "murdering the truth," since the plaintiff was a conservative media outlet -- which inside the "public" broadcasting bubble translates as "not real news media." Democracy and press freedom = liberals.
They also avoided Zachary Young's successful defamation suit against CNN, since he was not a public figure. At least NPR mentioned Trump's suit against ABC over George Stephanopoulos falsely saying Trump was "found liable for rape," but PBS didn't mention any recent defamation case at all. It was too busy pushing "severe chilling effect" to notice.
