The Right-Wing Plot to ‘Murder’ a Free Press
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Back in 1964, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in a case called New York Times v. Sullivan. The court's decision established the right to a free press by protecting the media against erroneous lawsuits. That ruling has been instrumental in allowing journalists to scrutinize public figures, powerful corporations, and hold political leaders to account without fear of undue litigation.

But the landmark decision is now in jeopardy thanks to a coordinated legal effort that's been decades in the making. New York Times journalist David Enrich's new book, Murder the Truth, documents this legal crusade and exposes how this movement threatens the very foundation of our free press and democracy.

Today, he joins me to dig into the origins of this legal assault on Sullivan, its implications for journalism in both old and new media, and what it all means for the future of free speech in America. David, welcome to Power User. Thanks for having me. So I want to start by, first of all, explaining what New York Times or Sullivan is. Can you explain what was this case and how did it transform the press landscape in the United States back in the 60s? Basically, in 1960, the New York Times ran a full-page ad

paid for by supporters of Martin Luther King. And the ad in this kind of like fine print delved into some of the racist abuses being perpetrated by Southern officials who were perpetrating

really trying to preserve white supremacy in the South. And the gist of the ad was completely true. And Southern officials were trying to preserve white supremacy and they were racist and they were pursuing these kind of violent Stalinist tactics. But some of the, a couple of the details in the ad were either wrong or exaggerated. So a guy named LB Sullivan, who at the time was a Montgomery, Alabama commissioner who was in charge of the police department, among other things,

He filed a lawsuit against the Times, accusing the Times in this ad of having defamed him. Now, Sullivan wasn't actually named in the ad, but the Montgomery Police Department was mentioned as one of the kind of institutions that was involved in racist voter suppression and trying to undermine the civil rights movement. So he filed this lawsuit. It was heard in a case where the judge was also a white supremacist.

And so you will maybe not be surprised to hear that the jury very quickly sided with Sullivan and against the New York Times. And the verdict was a real kind of like shot across the bow of not only the Times, but a lot of other national news outlets as well, because both Sullivan and his peers started using lawsuits like this, not because their reputations had been damaged, but because they saw the lawsuits as a way to basically intimidate news outlets and to get them to stop covering the civil rights movement as aggressively as they had.

And so, like, the Times responded to this by pulling its reporters out of Alabama and discouraging them from writing about things like institutional racism. Anyway, the Times appealed. It lost the appeal at the state Supreme Court in Alabama, and then it appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And in 1964, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

And they reached a unanimous decision, which was really a kind of watershed moment in that not only for the civil rights movement, but for freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the U.S. And what they ruled was that in matters of public urgency, especially concerning public officials, like elected leaders, the media and the public need to have some breathing room.

so that if they get a fact or two wrong by mistake in the course of reporting a story, they are not worried that they are going to be sued into oblivion. And so the Supreme Court created this standard, which has come to be known as the actual malice standard, which says that if you're a public official or a public figure bringing a defamation suit, the only way you can win is if you establish not only that you were defamed and not only that the facts were wrong, but also that the person who wrote these things

either knew that what they were writing was false, so in other words, they lied, or acted with reckless disregard for the accuracy. So the effect of this was to give just a lot of protection to news outlets and just members of the public who wanted to investigate or scrutinize or criticize what powerful people or institutions were doing. And

Yeah, this was a really huge moment that changed the nature of journalism going forward. It's not a coincidence that this case was decided in 1964 and you went on to have journalists and news outlets playing really decisive roles in exposing the lies underpinning the Vietnam War, Watergate, things like that. And it really, a lot of those things would not have been possible if journalists and news outlets had to worry that if they got a fact or two wrong by mistake in good faith,

the consequence of that would have been potentially, you know, litigation that could have shut them down. Can you talk a little bit more about just what the journalism landscape was like before this ruling and what it was like after? You mentioned some of these like

big stories that were able to be broken because of this ruling? What would a world without Sullivan be like? A lot of journalists, I think, regarded the role they played prior to Sullivan and prior to huge journalistic breakthroughs like Vietnam and like Watergate kind of as akin to stenographers. They were there to provide, to be kind of a mouthpiece for government officials. And there were some, there were plenty of exceptions to that. And I think the emerging role the media was starting to play in covering the civil rights movement

was the exception that kind of proved that rule. And the media was trying to find its footing in a world where there were a lot of lies and a lot of really high stakes. But those efforts were being met at every turn with kind of a furious legal response that was really impaired their ability to aggressively cover things. And so I think a world without Sullivan would be a world in which everyone is worried about their ability to speak truth to power and to write things

openly and at times critically about anyone in our society and our economy who has a lot of power, whether that's the president of the United States or like a local real estate developer in your town. As part of the reporting for this book, I saw this happening time and time again throughout the country where even with Sullivan and especially local journalists, independent journalists, community news outlets are getting threatened or sued, uh,

in ways that really jeopardize their stability. And that's even, that's in a world where we do have these solvent protections. And I think it would just become immeasurably worse and much easier to bully and intimidate journalists

if you were to roll back some of these protections. Yeah, it seems like the effort to really dismantle this ruling has accelerated in the past 15 years. Obviously, you talk about sort of Clarence Thomas and like his origins of hating the media and all of this stuff. But you talk about the Gawker lawsuit that Peter Thiel funded as this like moment. And there's this guy sort of Charles Harder who starts to

develop this kind of new strategy against the press. Can you talk about why that was such a pivotal moment and what it ultimately did? Do people still remember Gawker? I don't even know. I obviously do, but I feel like some of the Zoomers that listen might not remember, but it was an iconic blog. Yeah, it was iconic. And just its whole MO was to offend people. And it was doing a combination of just like pure snark and some like kind of racy stuff, but also just like really pure accountability journalism.

And one of the reasons that Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire, hated it so much was that they were pioneering at the time this kind of very aggressive in-your-face style of coverage of Silicon Valley that Silicon Valley people like Peter Thiel were just not accustomed to. They were accustomed to journalists writing these fawning pieces, kind of marveling at their latest whiz-bang inventions. And Gawker was just like...

to use a British expression, just like taking the piss. And they were making fun of them and they were digging into their finances and exposing, like when Peter Thiel's hedge funds were suffering losses, writing about that or writing about some of the kind of crazy fringe theories that seemed to animate Peter Thiel. So Thiel set out on this secret mission to kill Gawker and he hired...

A young man to kind of mastermind this young man hired Charles Harder, who at the time was a kind of not very prominent Hollywood lawyer. And they spent years like scouring the landscape and digging into Gawker, trying to find some legal weak spots that they could use to try and either cripple or destroy Gawker.

the website and eventually came across hulk hogan gawker published a snippet of a sex tape involving hulk hogan charles harder and his team volunteered to help with the lawsuit and in heart and harder at this point he knew he was working for some billionaire but he claims not to have even realized he's working for peter thiel hulk hogan certainly didn't know he was in bed with peter thiel hulk hogan filed a lawsuit against gawker uh

alleging that his privacy had been violated. This went to trial in Florida in 2016. And the jury returned a verdict against Gawker that would have been really bad for Gawker, but it became even worse because Teal's team had figured out all these legal ins and outs that basically handcuffed Gawker and basically

made it so that Gawker could not appeal the case effectively. And that was the end of Gawker. That's why a lot of people have not even heard of Gawker today because it ceased to exist. And, um,

That that court case and the masterminding of it by Peter Thiel and his colleagues was really it was a crucial moment because it showed the whole world that if you have enough money and you have some patience, here is a strategy that you can replicate to try to shut down criticism and to try and bankrupt people.

news outlets or journalists that are going to question the party line. I think that's why a lot of journalists, even if they didn't really like Gawker and thought Gawker was pushing the envelope, which it certainly was, still viewed this as a pretty surprising and kind of unusual and disturbing precedent because it really showcased the ability of a billionaire like Peter Thiel to just essentially create the truth or kill those who are peddling a different version of the truth.

the truth. And I mean, all of this happened, of course, I think this was around like 2015. Then 2016 is, of course, when we saw the rise of Trump, like it's sort of aligned with this rise of Trump and also his rhetoric against the media. And then harder, I think you wrote also eventually ended up to do a bunch of work for the Trump family. One other sort of, I guess, group of lawyers that was watching this very closely, it was really just two of them, right? Yeah, Tom Clare and Libby Locke. Tom

Claire and Livvy Locke. And I think at that point, they were still at their old law firm, but they were kind of watching this happen. And Claire Locke, for any journalists that know that have ever reported critically on Silicon Valley or anyone else, I don't know. I've certainly dealt with their threats. I feel like they are notorious, like anti-media lawyers, and they've really established themselves in this space. So can you talk about their origin story and how they kind of, I feel like they took this

like what was done to Gawker and like put it on steroids. I mean, I totally agree with that. And they haven't had as much success as Charles Harder had with Gawker, but it's not for lack of trying. So basically they, Tom Clare and Libby Locke worked together at a big corporate law firm, Kirkland and Ellis. And they, Tom was Libby's mentor and accounts of this differ depending on who you're asking. But the account that I heard most often from,

from people I trusted the most was that Tom and Libby began having an affair while he was her mentor and often her direct boss at Kirkland and Ellis. Tom and Libby deny that they were having an affair at that point, but they do not deny that these rumors were circulating and pressure grew internally on them by all accounts. And in 2014, they decided the simplest thing to do would be to leave

Kirkland and start their own firm. And they decided that their own firm would focus on what up until that point had been this kind of niche backwater, which was defamation law. So it was a big gamble by them to create their own firm focusing on this. But basically, they very quickly over the space of about two years, went from no one having heard of them,

to running this boutique law firm that had become the leaders in threatening news outlets and journalists, occasionally filing lawsuits against them, but really kind of this no-holds-bar approach

approach to attacking journalists. And that's a description that they kind of wear on their sleeve. And I don't know if this is still true, but for a while, at least, you'd look on their website and they basically, they cited quotes in which they had been called media assassins and things like that. So they really reveled in this kind of outlaw

And they were very savvy lawyers and also very savvy. Their timing was fantastic because their arrival as this independent law firm, it coincided with the rise of Trump and with the Gawker lawsuit, which was basically like a starter's pistol firing on this race to use law firms and lawsuits and legal threats to get journalists to shut up if you didn't like what they were writing. And so Tom and Libby became...

probably the most feared law firm in the space. Certainly very savvy practitioners of the strongly worded threatening letter. And, you know, as they boast themselves, they've had a role in killing stories by all sorts of news outlets. One of the things I found during my reporting that they do not really boast about is that oftentimes what they're killing are local and independent journalists who are trying to look into the affairs of some really shady people. And

You know, they cloak this in arguments about protecting people's rights to privacy and their reputational rights and pushing back against, you know, a reckless, out of control liberal media. The truth is that the most effect that they have had often that I've seen, at least in my reporting, is often with journalists who don't really have the resources to fight back.

And they're Claire Locke are representing, you know, big companies that have polluted or powerful public figures who have abused people. You know, it's not quite the picture that they paint of themselves, but there's no question they've played just an absolutely instrumental role in kind of changing the media dynamics in this country where the simple act of writing about or

investigating or criticizing someone in a position of power leaves you pretty vulnerable to, at a bare minimum, getting one of these sternly worded letters. It's also like local news has been so decimated by, you know, the tech giants that have completely, you know, disrupted their business model and left them completely broke. So we've seen layoffs in that space. And then, I mean, you tell these horrifying stories, too, in more recent years of local

local journalists trying to do just the most basic accountability reporting and now finding all of these roadblocks. Yeah. And, you know, the media industry is kind of screwed up right now, for sure. But to me, one of the bright spots is that we've got this proliferation of independent journalists all over the country and people...

obviously like you, who have their own newsletters and their own podcasts. But it's like there's people of all different political persuasions and styles. And it's just this great kind of wonderful noise of discourse all over the country, I think, where there's no filters. And I just think it's a really cool, good thing for democracy, especially at a time when so many traditional news outlets are under financial pressure.

But let me say these legal threats and lawsuits that are being pushed by a very wide variety of lawyers at this point represent, I think, a really existential threat to a lot of these new independent journalists and publishers, because most people cannot afford libel insurance, don't have the money or the wherewithal to find lawyers.

And frankly, don't have the stomach to spend years tied up in litigation over stuff that you, you know, a lawyer will tell you, you will win because the constitution is on your side, but that might take years and it might entail a ton of money.

The psychological stress that I've seen reporters and publishers facing is really intense. And it goes beyond just being concerned about money. It's like it takes a really severe toll and has driven like a number of journalists to like really into mental health crises.

I mean, also so often these lawsuits are not even about winning. I mean, I've been sued for defamation many times now. And, you know, most recently, which the New York Times defended me wonderfully and obviously was a bogus lawsuit. Right. And but it was filed by this firm that is, of course, gone after the

journalists many times. The goal is to just smear your reputation. So, you know, of course, the person suing me, which again, lost the lawsuit, did multiple Tucker Carlson Fox News appearances. There's endless articles, dozens and dozens of articles across the right wing media about how I'm so unethical, just quoting directly from this lawsuit.

we won the lawsuit, nothing. I mean, the New York Times put out a tweet saying we won the lawsuit, but like not a single outlet covered it. And it's very, you know, it's used to basically like discredit these journalists' reputations. That's like a really, I think,

good and accurate microcosm of what's going on more broadly, which is that people like Trump and his allies are using this legal campaign and these tactics to try and discredit the entire media ecosystem. And it doesn't matter if it's the New York Times or just Taylor Lorenz and her podcast or if it's whatever. It doesn't matter. The point is that people in positions of power are

and this White House in particular, in a position of power, if they are relying on kind of distortions and lies and conspiracy theories to advance their agenda, then it is very much in their interest to discredit and weaken voices in the media that are going to refute those lies and distortions. And so I think this is, there's a broad campaign underway to foster distrust and to financially weaken and to psychologically beat down

journalists and news outlets and publishers and just everyday citizens and activists who have a tendency to speak up for themselves and to speak up for what they see as right and wrong and to try and present the truth. And, you know, the beauty of Sullivan, from my biased opinion or my biased perspective, is that, you know, the media gets things wrong all the time, right? We get facts wrong. Sometimes we have our biases that lead us to be too hard or too soft on someone.

It for sure happens, but generally in my experience anyway, journalists operate in good faith and we try to get facts right. And we try to, we do our best approximation of the truth on a daily basis. And there's this campaign underway, primarily coming from the right wing that not only seeks to discredit what the journalists are doing, but is really trying to create this, what I think is a fake story about media smears and about the unethical conduct

and just unreliability of what is produced day in, day out by all sorts of different news outlets. And again, it's an effort to discredit those and to weaken those who are telling a truth that threatens people who are relying on lies and distortions to advance their agenda. - It's so funny. There was multiple times when I was reading this book and as anybody that follows me know,

I've gotten a lot of coverage myself, like media coverage myself, mostly in the right wing media, but also in mainstream publications that I believe knowingly have printed false information. And it's been a challenge to get things like that corrected.

I like I basically have to rely on my own media clout and the fact that some of these people know me to get it fixed. But if I didn't have those connections and even with my connections, I can't always get things corrected in time. Libby Locke's bio says something. It says, oh, yeah, founding partner of Clare Locke, guaranteeing a free press, not a consequence free press. Yeah, she loves that line. So corny. But it is.

Like, what can people do that have been subject to bad faith attacks or, you know, Fox News that openly, I would argue, lies about people like don't they deserve more recourse? I don't think they do. No, because I think there is a lot of recourse. Like, I think if you look at it, there are many instances recently of not of you, but of other people who have been the victims of lies and deliberate distortions, especially by the right wing media suing successfully and clearing the high bar cases.

that Sullivan sets. And I think, and you look at Fox and their huge settlement with Dominion. You can look at Sandy Hook families and their lawsuit against Alex Jones. You can look at poll workers in Georgia and their successful suit against Rudy Giuliani. There are a bunch of other examples as well. Look, when people

are spreading lies, reputationally damaging lies, they should be held accountable for that. And even when you're, when there's a private person involved, you're a public figure, sorry to say, but there's like, if you're a private person, the bar is much lower, right? You do not need to meet the actual mal standard. And I just think the thing I like,

just want everyone to know always is that there are plenty of examples of the media getting things wrong, sometimes badly getting things wrong. And I think the media could be, especially the mainstream media, could be a lot better at being transparent and holding itself accountable, just being open with readers and the public when we mess up, because we do mess up. That said, I don't think that...

this is because of New York Times versus Sullivan or because of the First Amendment. I think this is because there, it's like in a social media age, it is very hard to hold anyone accountable for anything. The social media companies themselves obviously can't be held accountable for

under the law. And, you know, we could have a whole other debate about whether that makes sense and why or why not. But to me, I think the really important thing to emphasize, though, is that for the most part, the traditional media and all these new media outlets are doing their best. It's imperfect, but they're doing their best to get things right and to generally correct the mistakes when they get things wrong. I think there is a concerted movement on the right

that is not operating in good faith. And they are trying to go gin up examples of supposed bad faith behavior by the media. And in fact, what they're doing is really just actively trying to undercut Americans' faith in truth.

and accuracy in the existence of facts. And there's no better way to do that than to spread the fiction that journalists, all they do is smear people and they operate with impunity. And look, again, it's not about the media being perfect because we are far from it. But there's a big difference between being imperfect, which we are, and being this kind of rabid dog that needs to be put down, which is the way that people like Libby Locke and certainly Donald Trump portray

portray us. And maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle, but like, it's definitely not this extreme caricature that the right is using to delegitimize journalism. You wrote about the Dominion lawsuit, which I know Clare Locke was somewhat involved in, although it sounds like Libby Locke didn't even want to be that involved in it.

But you talk about this sort of like how it was almost like a lose-lose either way, where it was like if they won the lawsuit and won, which they did, in one sense, they could prove, well, you know, the system works, right? Like people can be held accountable. But then that also kind of discredits their campaign against Sullivan, because, of course, if they lost, they could argue, see, look, we can't hold the media accountable. They put themselves in a bit of a bind there because they want obviously they want to win. That was in their financial self-interest. It was in their psychological self-interest.

But if they won, it was going to prove the opposite thing that Libby and others had been arguing, which is that you can't hold media companies to account. And I think that was a big part of the reason that Libby was secretly trying to pull her firm off of this case while it was ongoing, which is something that I think

Very few people knew about, but it was definitely happening behind the scenes. It seems like all of these cases are trying to set these like legal precedents to ultimately undo this bigger case of Sullivan. How close do you think we're getting? And can you talk about like the efforts in recent years? I mean, do you think we're closer than ever to seeing something like that overturned? And what role also does the current makeup of the Supreme Court play?

play in that. First of all, yes, I do think we're closer than we've been in a really long time to overturn Sullivan. My hunch is that it probably will not be overturned outright in the immediate or even

medium term, I think more likely is that it gets kind of someone chips away around the edges and basically makes it easier for like public figures. So like a billionaire or a celebrity or a university president to successfully win a defamation case rather than going all the way and making it easier for a public official, like an elected leader like Trump or someone like that to win cases. But I mean, I think even

you know, on the margins, like easing up on the First Amendment is potentially really problematic. And again, it can seem logical and fair and you want to give people the ability to preserve and protect and defend their reputations, which I totally get. And that makes perfect sense. But you also really want to protect the public's right

and journalists, right, to investigate matters of public importance. And when you make it easier for people to sue the media, with powerful people, rich people to sue the media, it's like pretty clear what's going to happen, which is that those legal threats become much more potent and much scarier. Lawsuits win more often, and more and more journalists make the kind of economically rational, logical decision that it is not in their best interest

to write controversial stories or to dig into the affairs of powerful people because you're going to face an overwhelming legal response. And wouldn't it just be simpler not to do that? And that's not a good dynamic. And that's really troubling, I think, for democracy and for the ability of even people at a community level to understand and hold to account what their leaders and other powerful people are doing. One thing that protects democracy

journalists in some states, at least, are these anti-SLAPP laws. Certainly, I'm in California, was in New York before, too. But having been involved in defamation suits, they always try to get it, you know, heard in some state that doesn't have these laws. Can you explain, you know, what do these laws do and why are they so important?

Yeah. So anti-slap laws basically give, if you're a defendant in a lawsuit, like a defamation lawsuit, this gives you recourse. If the court finds that the lawsuit was intended to suppress your speech, it gives you some recourse. So you can recourse.

For example, first of all, you can get the case dismissed a little more easily. You can also go and try and force the plaintiff, so the person who brought the case, to cover your legal expenses. And so it's been a really useful rule in quite a few states to deter the filing of garbage lawsuits. Now, the problem is that if you are a billionaire, if you were Steve Wynn or Elon Musk or Donald Trump,

and you wanna use lawsuits to threaten and intimidate, especially smaller news outlets, the prospect of having to pick up someone's attorney fees is not that much of a deterrent. Maybe that's gonna cost you a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe a million or a couple million. That's not something that is likely to have a huge or very powerful deterrent effect to prevent the filing of these suits in the first place. It does make it easier for the defendant

to get them booted out of court a bit faster. But again, that still can take years. And it can still mean that even if you get the other side to pick up your legal fees, your costs for libel insurance, if you can even get libel insurance, shoot up much higher. And that can take a toll for the foreseeable future. And again, one of the things I saw and tried to narrate in the

in this book is that there are all these stories out there of journalists at a local level doing their jobs and finding that through no fault of their own, not even, and this is in a world with Sullivan, through no fault of their own, they are getting like,

ground into dust, basically, because people that have a lot more money and resources than they do have decided that what they're writing about or their areas of coverage and things like that are unpleasant and unfavorable. They're going to use the weapons at their disposal to obliterate any journalist or news outlet that delves into this. And I think it's just like anti-slap laws can exist or not exist when you have a very determined billionaire going up against you. I'm not sure they're going to matter all that much.

One line that stood out to me so much in the book is somebody, there was some line where they were talking about like how much it would cost to take down different media companies. And I think Gawker was, I don't know what it was, 400 million or something. I can't remember what the number was, but you mentioned the number for the New York Times, I think, or was the New York Times 100 million? Yeah, I think it was 100 million, which is...

Like, that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, but it's also like not that much money. Like for a billionaire, like when I saw that number and that's to take down the New York Times. And of course, it's complete speculation. But you look at someone like Elon Musk, right, who bought Twitter for 44 billion, taking down the New York Times, if that's only 100 million, I'm honestly it's

it just doesn't seem that excessive when you consider how the amount of wealth that some of these people have accumulated. And this is one of the challenges right now, I think, is that you have people like Musk that have such incredible concentrated wealth and therefore power that it's

it's very hard to structure laws or even the constitution in a way that reigns them in or allows that or protects normal people or journalists from them exerting their influence in potentially really problematic ways and look the 100 million figure was this guy aaron de souza who was kind of the behind the scenes mastermind of the gawker lawsuit telling me how he had spitballed with other people who were interested in going after places like the new york times and i did not

or see a forensic accounting of how that $100 million might be spent. But I mean, look, there's no doubt that we're seeing right now with Musk going after Media Matters, which is an advocacy group and research group that employs journalists and that has scrutinized a lot of the rise of kind of hate speech on Twitter or X. He is pursuing this kind of no holds barred, multilateral,

multinational legal campaign that is designed to shut them down. And there are some signs that it's starting to work. And that's just one random example that I think really shows how vulnerable news outlets, advocacy groups, normal citizens are, and how powerless we can be to, uh,

you know, even use the rights that are clearly enshrined in the First Amendment. And to me, that's like a really strong argument in favor of keeping those protections in the Constitution as strong as possible. Yeah. I mean, are there efforts to strengthen Sullivan and other rulings like this? Like, how do you see the dismantling or the attempted dismantling, a rollback of a precedent like Sullivan in line with all these other attacks on free speech that we're seeing from the Trump administration?

Well, this is – attacking Sullivan is kind of one of the core pieces of the playbook that conservatives are deploying right now. And there's some much more immediate things they're also doing. And the Trump administration literally like eight weeks in maybe has –

you know, one thing after another that they've done to either intimidate news outlets or bar news outlets from things or investigate news outlets. And again, that's only where the early days of the Trump administration. And I think those are much more kind of direct frontal attacks on the media. The campaign against Sullivan is something that's been going on for a bit longer, not that much longer, but a bit longer. And it's going to take a

a longer time to pay dividends if it does at all. But this is one of the things we've seen over the years with the conservative legal movement is that they are very patient, very well organized, very well financed. And if they're persistent enough over a period of time, which might be decades, they often get their way because they have been very savvy about picking judges and very savvy about picking cases and using legal strategies to get cases that might work

might entice the Supreme Court to intervene. So that hasn't happened yet, obviously, with Sullivan. But I definitely, I think it's a risk. And if that were to happen,

Man, it's just all the forces I've described in this book and we're talking about now are just going to be exponentially more effective and exponentially scarier. And, you know, the public will be in a much worse space because we won't have journalists or as many journalists doing their jobs properly. Yeah. I mean, I was in India in January for a couple of weeks visiting friends who are journalists over there. My really close friend who's dealt with, you

you know, legal issues in that country. And it's wild to look around the world at some of these places that really don't have a free press anymore. I guess, you know, and you mentioned the UK actually in their kind of stricter laws. You know, when you look around the world, are there any sort of comparisons that you can draw between other countries in terms of like what America might look like without a

without Sullivan and if some of these protections were lost? That's actually a really good question. I mean, India is a good example. I have not had the pleasure of visiting India, but I've heard

about that from people like you, I think. Hungary is another example that gets floated around a lot recently in terms of this kind of slow but steady erosion of an independent and kind of vigorous press. The UK is interesting. I worked in the UK for many years for the Wall Street Journal. On the one hand, the British, there are a lot of good British journalists. They do a lot of good work. They can be very aggressive and independent.

On the other hand, their investigations can get shut down very easily in the courts. And I personally had I've been sued for defamation in the UK, and I've also had a British court issue an injunction against me that was supposed to prevent me from reporting something. And that's that's the kind of thing that is like very startling to me to see up close and personal in a country that is like a

a liberal democracy like the UK, where they do not have these free press protections enshrined in law. And it means that there's just a lot of stuff that goes under the radar that does not get uncovered. Even when journalists know about it, it remains secret. And I just think that more information in the public domain and transparency is like a good thing for our country and for democracy. And I think that a

a lot of what we're seeing is moving in the opposite direction. Yeah. Well, I think also as we're witnessing the dismantling of the traditional press through all of these efforts and, you know, you mentioned this too, like it's been amazing to see this robust independent media ecosystem. They're so incredibly vulnerable in a sense. I mean, I would say independent journalists are far more vulnerable. If I write something dicey, I'm going to do it for a traditional org freelance because I don't want to worry. And I'm in Substack's Defender Program. I, you know, have like legal insurance contracts.

to an extent, but I mean, you wrote about Mike Mason in the book, who's a friend of mine also recently on the show and, you know, he runs his own independent site. And like you mentioned, it just even being sued, like ups your, uh, your fees, um, to the point that it just becomes difficult. Um, I'm also just thinking of, you know, these efforts that have been bipartisan to remove anonymity from the internet. And, um, you know, there's plenty of independent journalists that will like leak things to these anonymous accounts on Twitter or, uh,

especially in the celebrity news world, like this is a big thing. And then the journalist, you know, the actress or whatever wants to sue for defamation or sue to shut something down. But it's anonymous. And now you have also these right wing forces with the Democrats trying to strip anonymity from the Internet and trying to make everybody more, quote unquote, accountable. But I think what it ultimately does is allow just make it harder to reveal wrongdoing. Right. It is just extremely important that journalists and others have the right to criticize freely and expressly.

as long as you're not lying or being totally reckless to be able to like speak up. If you see something that is an injustice or something wrongdoing that you can expose, like, I think it is important that we have the right,

an ability to do that without fearing that we're going to be outed or that we're going to be crushed by litigation. And I mean, I think that's one of the things that a lot of people are worried about right now with the Trump administration. You know, journalists and others rely on confidential sources a lot, not because these people don't exist.

we know who they are. It's just we're keeping their identities confidential because they're afraid of facing retaliation or sometimes they're in physical danger at times. And there have been a lot of efforts under previous administrations, both Democrat and Republican, to out journalists' anonymous sources. But I think there's even more concern right now that with someone like Kash Patel in charge of the FBI, that you're going to have much more draconian actions taken by the administration potentially

to reveal journalists' sources and potentially to try to hold journalists themselves accountable for violating state secrecy laws and things like that, which is, man, what a chilling effect that will have. And it'll really impair the ability of everyone, but most of all people without the resources to hire their own lawyers to

to write things that are revealing about the government. And there's so much more of that happening on Substack and just on social media right now than there ever has been, I think. And it's where a lot of us have been getting our news lately about the latest goings on inside the Trump administration. There's a growing group of people who are really trusted by sources inside the federal government. And those people don't always work for The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal. And again,

Again, that's like a really good thing, I think, for democracy. It's also good for mainstream news outlets to have competition and to really have to fight to get the best stories. But it also is a point of weakness because a lot of the journalists that are producing that invaluable information are one bad lawsuit or one sloppy mistake away from

from being in really serious financial and legal jeopardy. And that is a scary place to be. That's what I always tell people when a lot of people in like the creator industry, whatever, it's like they're cheering for the downfall of the mainstream media. They cheer for these things when people get sued into oblivion or whatever, right? They're like, screw those people, they deserve to die. And it's like, well, that is even worse for the independent journalists. Like the independent media is not exempt from this entire legal infrastructure. What do

you think, I guess, like average people that are listening to this, that care about this issue, I'm, you know, we see these changes happening in the courts and it's, it feels so,

impossible to affect any change? Like, what do you think that they can do about this? So this is a total self-serving cop out. But I think you should like, first of all, read and buy as many copies of my book as you can afford, please. But like, I think you just need to like get educated about these issues a little bit. As I was kind of starting this book project and kind of testing the waters with like friends and colleagues and family, like no one I talked to basically

especially outside of journalism, had any idea what this decision was or why it mattered. And I think there is, and you just kind of alluded to this, there's like a reflex that a lot of people have right now who are frustrated with the media for one reason or another to kind of cheer for these somewhat kind of draconian issues.

actions that get taken, whether it's a government investigation or a lawsuit. And I just think people need to understand better how this fits into a very coordinated campaign and strategy that's being executed on the right wing to delegitimize people and institutions that will speak truth to power. And I think that this isn't

The media, as I've said a thousand times, and I'm sorry to be a broken record, we get things wrong all the time. That's frustrating. It's bad. We need to be held accountable and transparent, but we're doing the best we can, even if the best isn't good enough sometimes.

And this kind of blanket maligning of the media because of its failures, I think it's really, it can be dangerous because they're, it's again, playing into the hands of people who really want to shut down anyone who's criticizing them. And that's not to say the media should not be criticized. We definitely should be, and we should be more receptive to that criticism. But it's understanding how these kind of orchestrated assaults

from conservative lawyers and activists and judges and politicians. It's not an accident. It's not coincidental. It's not organic.

It's something that's happening very deliberately and that has potentially really great consequences. So read my book because it'll tell you all about that. Literally, I couldn't agree more. And then last question, I was wondering, actually, just writing about this topic, like, were you nervous, like writing this book? Because I feel like you're writing a book about kind of all of these people who all they want to do is sue journalists into oblivion, you know, for coverage. So yeah, I don't know. Like, was it nerve wracking to write this book? And was there like an experience?

sense of legal review? Look, I operate from a position of privilege professionally, probably personally as well, but certainly professionally. I work for The New York Times. I previously worked at The Wall Street Journal. My book publisher is HarperCollins, which is part of a huge conglomerate. So I've got good, strong institutions at my back and good, strong lawyers who review my work. And so I don't think I was that nervous about... I fact check.

I get things legally bulletproof. I mean, that being said, I did get, you know, I was not surprised by this, but they, Claire Locke waged its own little micro campaign against me, which frankly surprised me. I knew they were, we would get some angry letters from them as we did fact checking, both for a piece I was doing for the New York times. And also for this book, I was surprised by the kind of ferocity of their attack. And also just there was what felt to me, at least like them casually slinging around, like,

just absolute nonsense allegations about me being dishonest or kind of disguising my true aims of what I was writing. And at one point, probably the scariest moment for me was

This is back last year. I remember very clearly I was walking home from the train and we got a letter, another letter from Clare Locke and I was scanning it on my phone, scanning through it on my phone. And it's like a PDF. And in the letter, there were screenshots of some of my electronic communications with sources.

And my heart just stopped because how on earth did they get those? It turned out how they got those is they had figured out who a couple of my sources were just through kind of connecting the dots here and there. And then they had threatened my sources with litigation if they didn't hand over their communications with me. And as it turned out, the communications were pretty innocuous. And it was just me like scheduling meetings or arranging phone calls and things like that. But

Man, it like stopped me in my tracks. Again, that's me having not only having good institutional backing, but also having spent at that point, I don't know, like a year and a half or two years reporting and researching on these exact topics. And the fact that it surprised me and really, frankly, unnerved me so much. It just like goes to show how important.

terrifying, utterly terrifying. That would be if you didn't have the experience and the legal backing and institutional backing that I knew I had. And, you know, as I write in the book, there are a lot of places that in the face of threats like that, make the economically and kind of psychologically rational decision to just fold, to not pursue the fight and to back down. And

It makes sense like in an individual decision level capacity, but it's like a very bad thing for democracy and for our free press when people make those decisions. But I also completely get it. All right, David. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me. Thank you so much for having me. This has been fun.

All right, that's it for the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Don't forget to subscribe to my tech and online culture newsletter, UserMag. That's usermag.co. That's usermag.co for all the latest tech and online culture news delivered straight to your inbox. If you like this show, don't forget to give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Power User.