Journalism in America is under attack, and it’s happening right here in Iowa. You may think that here in the Midwest, the Trump administration’s ability to create baseless lawsuits doesn’t affect you, but the dangers of Trump’s lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer prove that nothing could be further from the truth.
In November 2024, a few days before the presidential election, Selzer published her Iowa presidential pre-election poll, which predicted that Democratic candidate Kamala Harris would beat out Republican candidate Donald Trump by three percentage points in the state. However, as most other polls at the time predicted, when the election came through, Trump won the Iowa polls by 13 percentage points.
As a result, the Center for American Rights, a conservative nonprofit, filed a class-action lawsuit under the Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act in Polk County District Court on behalf of Dennis Donnelly, a Des Moines Register subscriber from West Des Moines.
“The Register utterly failed to live up to those promises with its decision to publish its signature Iowa Poll in the days leading up to the 2024 presidential election,” reads the lawsuit. “It promised subscribers like Dennis Donnelly that it would provide trustworthy news, and instead it delivered the dictionary definition of fake news. In doing so, it defrauded Dennis and every other subscriber who paid good money to receive accurate, trustworthy information from the state’s ‘premier source of information.’”
These claims are baseless in their description of trustworthy news and defrauding subscribers. A poll is merely a snapshot in time and a prediction based on interviews and surveys. It is not a guarantee of the future but an empirical observation and hypothesis. To sue a pollster for fraud is like suing a weather reporter for saying it would be sunny in a week when instead it was rainy.
Despite this being an obviously ludicrous claim, the purpose of this lawsuit isn’t to demolish the reputation of these companies and individuals, but rather to expend their resources, sending a clear message to those who report news that’s against Trump to watch out. Journalists are forced to tread lightly since any negative news about Trump might land them in a world of hurt.
“There’s an acronym that describes lawsuits like that which the Trump supporters filed, and they’re called SLAPP,” Randy Evans, a former editor for the Register and the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, told me in an interview. “[These are] strategic lawsuits against public participation, and the purpose is very clear. It’s to intimidate, coerce and to punish those who speak or say things, write things or produce newspaper polls that go against the interests of one group.”
With SLAPP lawsuits and political intimidation actively attacking journalism now more than ever before, the best thing citizens can do is be vigilant and expansive in their news consumption, ensuring that they make informed decisions about the future of their country.
“This is the time for the American people to stand up and support the media,” said Dave Busiek, a former news director for KCCI TV and current member of the Iowa Writers Association. “Or else, there’s going to come a day when the American people are going to really want journalists to tell them what’s going on, and there are going to be darn few of them left.”
Trump’s administration is weakening Americans’ ability to express their First Amendment rights by creating baseless lawsuits that are only designed to waste the time and money of the news organizations he doesn’t directly control. Be smart in your news consumption and fight for the freedom of journalists to write and report the truth.
