When I was a cub reporter at a small-town newspaper in the Pacific Northwest, I received a threatening letter from a law firm. My heart racing, I took it to the glass-walled office of my editor, John C. Hughes. He thanked me for taking the risk of libel seriously, but he also gave me some parting advice. "Anyone can pay a lawyer $100 to write you an angry letter," he said.
I thought of that moment recently when I learned that President-elect Donald Trump is suing pollster Ann Selzer, her polling firm, The Des Moines Register and the newspaper's parent company, Gannett, over a Nov. 2 poll that showed Kamala Harris winning Iowa by 3 percentage points. (Trump ended up winning the state by 13 points.).
To be clear, this is not a libel lawsuit: it's being brought under an Iowa law that bars deceptive advertising. But when evaluating the merits of this suit, my old editor's dictum still applies.
This is a preview of Ryan Teague Beckwith's latest article. Read the full column here.
