No. of Recommendations: 5
No, the obvious takeaway from the Trump lawsuits against various media organizations is not to deliberately make editorial judgments with "reckless disregard for the truth" or with "actual malice" that act to defame public figures like Trump or to place them in a false light.
iirc, the suit against the Beeb is over a documentary it produced that had an excerpt of his Jan 6 speech, that put the lines about going to the Capital, and the "fight like hell" lines together. I watched the noon local news that day, and they cut over to that speech, as it was going on, for a couple minutes. All the language I heard was inflammatory. His intent was clearly to get the mob more agitated. Saying "peacefully", once, does not outweigh an hour of getting the mob wound up, any more than saying "that would be wrong", on one occasion, absolved Nixon of everything related to Watergate. The USian media caves to Trump, and pays him millions, to maintain access to his ravings. It will be interesting to see if the Beeb is made of sterner stuff.
Steve
