Columbia Journalism School stands with our alumna Khadeeja Safdar, '13 M.A. Business & Economics, of The Wall Street Journal and her colleague Joseph Palazzolo, who were named last week as defendants in a refiled $10 billion defamation lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump stemming from the Journal's reporting on Jeffrey Epstein. An earlier version of the suit was dismissed in April.
We will not comment on pending litigation. But this lawsuit does not stand alone. It is the latest in a growing pattern of high-dollar legal actions brought by public officials against the news organizations that cover the powerful — a pattern that, whatever the outcome of any single case, is reshaping the climate in which American accountability journalism is practiced. The patient, public-interest reporting that democracies depend on is now being produced under sustained legal pressure.
Columbia Journalism School believes that journalists must be able to pursue consequential stories without the prospect of extraordinary legal pressure becoming a routine cost of doing their work.
Signed,
The Faculty of Columbia Journalism School
