“Good Morning America” co-host George Stephanopoulos, who is taking fire over the Walt Disney Co.’s decision to settle President-elect Trump’s defamation suit against ABC News, isn’t going anywhere.
Stephanopoulos, 63, recently agreed to a new multi-year contract to remain with the ABC News morning program, according to several people familiar with matter who were not authorized to comment publicly.
An ABC News representative declined comment.
The deal will likely quell rumblings of any long-term fallout over ABC News’ agreement to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library and $1 million in legal fees to settle a lawsuit over Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air statement that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll in 1990s.
Trump’s suit said Stephanopoulos defamed him as the jury in the Carroll case found him liable for sexual abuse — not rape. Trump sued after Stephanopoulos made the comment on a March 10 broadcast of “This Week.”
The judge in the case said that “the finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ ”
Journalists at ABC were disheartened that the news division and Stephanopoulos agreed to apologize to Trump and that the company was unwilling to fight the suit in court.
The decision — a preview of the challenges of covering a new Trump Administration — added to the dread already felt among the rank and file who are already bracing for cost-cutting in the new year, according to one insider not authorized to comment publicly.
But any concerns at Disney about the negative reaction to the settlement took a back seat to the fragile state of “Good Morning America,” which has fallen behind NBC’s “Today” in the Nielsen ratings.
Stephanopoulos — who is said to earn in the range of $20 million annually — has long provided nutritious news calories to the breezy morning program that he co-hosts with Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan.
The network has no apparent successor to Stephanopoulos, who joined “Good Morning America” in 2009. A change in the host chairs can be disruptive to morning audience viewing habits, which are deeply entrenched.
Disney’s decision to back down to Trump has raised fears that the media industry will be tested by the contentious president-elect, who has promised to use legal means against outlets he believes have treated him unfairly.
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A Florida judge ruled in favor of U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young, who says he was defamed in a 2021 CNN story on evacuation services in Afghanistan.
“The incoming president is going to make the use of libel laws as a mechanism to harass and intimidate the people they perceive as their opponents,” said veteran 1st Amendment attorney Lee Levine. “That’s now perfectly clear. … He wants to send a message out there: ‘Don’t cross me.’ ”
Trump has also filed a lawsuit against CBS, claiming the network deceptively edited of a “60 Minutes” interview of Vice President Kamala Harris to make her look better to viewers. The network denied the accusation.
On Monday, he sued the Des Moines Register over an erroneous preelection poll that showed him losing the state.
Levine believed ABC News would have prevailed on a legal basis had the case gone to trial. But the company was unwilling to take the risk of paying damages set by a jury and the negative publicity that comes with any legally protracted battle, sources said.
“There was a real fear of an adverse judgment of a larger amount that was paid in a settlement,” said Levine, who believes ABC News would have prevailed in court.
Levine added that Trump’s use of the courts to attack media organizations will intimidate outlets that don’t have the resources to mount a robust legal defense. He is hopeful that larger companies such as Disney will “hold firm and litigate these things when appropriate” going forward.
Disney likely wanted to avoid the risk of having the inner workings of its operations to be presented as evidence in the public setting of a courtroom.
Settlement talks began after the judge in the case ruled Friday that Stephanopoulos and Trump had to sit for depositions and submit emails and text messages as evidence.
It’s not uncommon for media companies to settle libel cases to avoid such exposure.
Fox News paid a record-setting $787 million to settle a defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems over false statements made in the network’s 2020 election reporting.
The agreement, which sources said was approved by Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger, came just as the case went to trial, where its top executives and anchors were expected to testify. Many libel attorneys were surprised the suit was not settled before a substantial amount of emails and testimony were revealed in court records.
Trump’s previous attempts to sue news outlets critical of him have failed.
Trump sued the New York Times over its investigation of his finances, which led to the recent New York civil court ruling that has him on the hook for $454 million. The suit was dismissed in March, and Trump had to reimburse the newspaper’s legal costs.
In 2022, Trump sued CNN for $475 million, claiming the news network was waging a campaign against him by booking guests critical of his policies and speeches. The case was dismissed in 2023.
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Stephen Battaglio writes about television and the media business for the Los Angeles Times out of New York. His coverage of the television industry has appeared in TV Guide, the New York Daily News, the New York Times, Fortune, the Hollywood Reporter, Inside.com and Adweek. He is also the author of three books about television, including a biography of pioneer talk show host and producer David Susskind.
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