Speaking at a Financial Times press conference, Levien drew parallels on Trump’s lawsuit and said, ‘If you look at countries like Turkey and Hungary and India, those countries have elections but they also really work to quash opposition to the regime.’

New Delhi: Meredith Kopit Levien, the chief executive officer of The New York Times, has said the company will “not be cowed” by Donald Trump’s USD 15 billion lawsuit against the newspaper, while also accusing the US president of enacting an “anti-press playbook”. Speaking at a Financial Times press conference, Levien described the lawsuit as a campaign to intimidate independent journalism, drawing parallels with authoritarian tactics in countries such as Turkey, Hungary and India.

“There is an anti-press playbook at this point… If you look at countries like Turkey and Hungary and India, those countries have elections but they also really work to quash opposition to the regime,” Levien said at the conference, as quoted by Financial Times. 

“What has that anti-press playbook looked like in those places? It’s harassment of journalists, it’s discrediting of independent journalism. And it looks like what we’re seeing here. The New York Times will not be cowed by this,” she said.

These were the first public comments by the chief executive since the lawsuit was filed on Monday, September 15. 

Trump filed a USD 15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, claiming that there is a “decades-long pattern” by the newspaper “of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”

According to FT, The New York Times is valued at less than USD 10bn on the stock market.

In the filing, Trump’s lawyers singled out four journalists as well as NYT itself, accusing it of acting as “a full-throated mouthpiece” for the Democratic party, and claiming that these journalists wrote a series of articles and a book that show a “reckless disregard” for the truth.

This comes a week after the paper drew Trump’s ire for publishing a note bearing his signature that appeared in a “birthday book” for the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The note was sexually suggestive, leading to renewed conversation about the president’s knowledge of Epstein’s criminal behaviour.

According to Financial Times, the showdown between Trump and the powerful US newspaper “marks an escalation of the president’s legal offensive against the media – and a test of First Amendment protections for free speech and the press”. 

The suit is Trump’s fourth multibillion-dollar defamation claim against a major US news outlet since March 2024, the report notes, with ABC News and CBS News having settled cases earlier this year, agreeing to pay USD 15mn and USD 16mn respectively to Trump’s planned presidential library.

In July, Trump had sued The Wall Street Journal for USD 10bn over a report about the same birthday note he had allegedly sent to Epstein. Dow Jones, the newspaper’s parent company, reportedly said it would “vigorously defend” the suit. 

Levien said, “The lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims. I believe its purpose is to stifle independent journalism, to deter the kind of fact-based reporting that the Times and other institutions are known for”. 

“It will not have that effect. The Times will continue to follow the facts wherever they may lead, even when that is to uncomfortable places”, she said at the press conference.

This article went live on September eighteenth, two thousand twenty five, at thirty-four minutes past four in the afternoon.

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