Billionaires vs. the Press in the Era of Trump

A small group of superrich Americans — President-elect Donald Trump among them — has laid the groundwork for an unprecedented legal assault on the media. Can they succeed?

The new president will be a man who constantly accuses the media of getting things wrong but routinely misrepresents and twists facts himself. There are signs, too, of new efforts to harness the law to the cause of cowing the press. President-elect Trump’s choice for chief adviser, Stephen Bannon, ran the alt-right Breitbart News Network before joining Trump’s campaign last summer. Breitbart announced recently that it was “preparing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a major media company” for calling Breitbart a “ ‘white nationalist’ website.” Even if Breitbart is bluffing, the threat will discourage other news outlets from using that term to describe it, and that will in turn help Breitbart and Bannon seem more acceptable to the mainstream. President-elect Trump was right about one thing: You don’t have to win every case to advance in the larger legal war.