Trump sues the Des Moines Register newspaper for alleged “election interference.” Media news

The lawsuit filed by the US President-elect comes days after reaching a defamation settlement with ABC News.

US President-elect Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit accusing a newspaper and polling company of engaging in “brazen election interference” by publishing an opinion poll before the election. Reduce his popularity.

The lawsuit filed late Monday accuses the Des Moines Register newspaper, its parent company Gannett, and pollster Ann Selzer of intentionally underestimating Trump’s support in a poll that showed him trailing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

The Nov. 2 poll, which showed Harris with a three-percentage-point lead in Iowa, sparked widespread interest as Trump easily won the Midwestern state in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

Trump won the state of Iowa in the presidential elections that took place last month by a margin of more than 13 percentage points.

“Selzer’s failure to vote was not an amazing coincidence, but intentional,” the lawsuit filed in Polk County, Iowa, said. As President Trump noted: She knew exactly what she was doing.

The lawsuit, which bases its claims on alleged violations of Iowa’s consumer fraud law, seeks three times the damages incurred as determined by the jury.

Lark Marie Anton, a spokeswoman for the Des Moines Register, said the newspaper stands behind its reporting and believes the lawsuit is baseless.

“We acknowledged that the pre-election Selzer/Des Moines Register poll did not reflect President Trump’s final margin of victory on Election Day in Iowa by publishing the poll’s full demographics, cross tabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as technical analysis,” Anton said. “Explanation from pollster Anne Selzer”.

Selzer did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but she said in an interview with PBS last week that she was puzzled why anyone would think she designed the poll to achieve a particular result.

Trump’s lawsuit comes just days later ABC News agreed to the settlement A defamation case he brought over broadcaster George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate assertion that he had been found civilly liable for rape.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil liberties organization, condemned the lawsuit as a “direct assault” on the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression.

“If newspapers and polling companies are sued for ‘deceptive practices’ because they publish stories and poll results that politicians don’t like, then every media outlet’s First Amendment rights are threatened. Polling error is not election interference or fraud,” the group said.

Trump, too Sue CBS News During an interview with Harris, which he claims was deceptively edited, he faces steep legal hurdles to victory in lawsuits he has filed over free speech protections in the United States, which are among the strongest in the world.

However, lawsuits can create difficulties for news organizations by revealing potentially embarrassing internal communications and subjecting journalists and executives to depositions.