It is no secret that President Donald Trump has issues with the mainstream media. Fake news seems to follow him wherever he goes, and Mr. Trump is never silent about it. On March 30, he tweeted, “The failing @nytimes has disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change libel laws?”
A libel is a malicious, false statement in written or broadcast media meant to damage a person’s reputation. Libel laws are in place to prevent such occurrences.
President Trump has promised to improve our libel laws since his presidential campaign. According to an article from The New York Times, “public figures rarely file libel suits and seldom win them.” Trump wants to make it easier to sue for libel so that when a media agency writes a hit piece, “we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected”.
The question posed in The New York Times article is this: can Trump really change the libel laws? The short answer is no, he cannot. Libel laws are mandated by the state, not the federal government. It is the state courts and legislatures that decide its contents.
President Donald Trump wants the libel laws changed in order to prevent print and broadcast media from producing hit pieces against him. His lawyers currently do not have grounds to file a libel suit against publications like The Times because Trump’s reputation is already too impaired to experience defamation.