Over the weekend, ABC News shocked the media establishment by agreeing to pay Donald Trump $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit that the president-elect filed against the network and its anchor George Stephanopoulos. On Monday, Trump announced that he plans to target another news outlet, this time, a much smaller, local newspaper: the Des Moines Register in Iowa.

Trump said he plans to sue the daily newspaper, with a staff of around 50 journalists, and political pollster Ann Selzer. He attacked the Register and Selzer for publishing a poll several days before the election that showed Vice President Kamala Harris defeating Trump in Iowa by 3 percentage points. Trump would go on to win Iowa by 13 points and has since said the paper published a “fake” poll.

“I’m not doing this because I want to,” Trump said during a Monday press conference, announcing the potential lawsuit. “I’m doing this because I feel I have an obligation to.”

Legal attacks, such as defamation suits, are nothing new for news organizations. Lawsuits by the rich and powerful, however, are not as common as one might think — and that’s because they often don’t work.

Thanks to precedents that largely favor journalists in cases against the powerful, many outlets defend their coverage, fighting the case in court, even at the cost of the organization’s finances. With ABC News bowing out of its own legal fight against Trump, however, media and legal experts worry Trump and other powerful individuals are now emboldened to retaliate against smaller,........

© The Intercept