Daily Mail Pays Melania Trump Damages Over Modelling Article
LONDON — British tabloid the Daily Mail and the Mail Online website agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to First Lady Melania Trump on Wednesday over an article they published containing allegations that "she had provided services beyond simply modelling."
The paper and website apologized and agreed to pay damages and costs after the first lady filed a $150 million lawsuit over a story published in August last year.
The apology said that the story had "questioned the nature of her work as a professional model, and republished allegations that she provided services beyond simply modelling."
We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them," it added. "We apologize to Mrs. Trump for any distress that our publication caused her."
Trump's lawsuit said she was seeking damages of $150 million. The amount agreed was not made public, although a source familiar with the situation told Reuters that the settlement was worth less than $3 million.
Both parties accepted the apology at London's High Court, according to the BBC.
The story ran in the newspaper under the headline: "Racy photos, and troubling questions about his wife's past that could derail Trump," as well as on the website Mail Online.
It was retracted with an apology less than two weeks after publication, with the media organization saying there was "no support for the allegations" and that "the point of the article was that these allegations could impact the U.S. presidential election even if they are untrue."
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I don't think that a spouse or children are fair game. Ever. I felt the same way about Mrs. Obama and their children. I'm glad to see this 'News' organization apologizing, retracting and forced to pay a penalty for publishing fake news. I wonder who will be next? I've seen a lot of vile speculation about Mrs. Trump over the course of the last year.
Let me be clear, any politician's spouse and children should be off limits to the political crowds, we seem to have lost our common decency.
I agree that spouse and children should not be fair game. However, we have an unprecedented involvement in our government by President Trump's family members, and their willingness to step into the spotlight and "govern" opens them up to criticism.
Mrs. Trump, Barron, and anyone else that is related to President Trump should be off limits, except those that have offices in the White House, etc.
Personally, I like Mrs. Trump and have absolutely no problem with her. I give her credit for staying married to him! If she left him, I wouldn't blame her, and would stand beside her. (Not that she would want some short, old woman from KY to be standing beside her...)
Agreed, if they have an office in the White House. If not, they should not be even remotely reported on.
First Ladies have a long tradition, going back to Martha Jefferson, (T. Jefferson's daughter), in describing their attire, etc., but it wasn't anything personal, and certainly wasn't an attack. Of course Mrs. Lincoln came under attack for her wild spending and general wackiness... Even Teddy Roosevelt's wife used to describe her clothing in different ways, in order to appear she was at the height of fashion-- when it was a dress she'd worn before. No one knew that Ida McKinley had epileptic fits, where her husband would place a napkin over her face when she had one at the dinner table.
It was a lot nicer then, wasn't it?
It certainly was, but back in the day of Woorward and Bernstein, you could trust a journalist to go after the truth regardless of where it took them. Now if it leads them towards something that would infringe on their political beliefs, they drop it and go somewhere else. Or they are just lazy and report whatever is fed to them without bothering to fact check (for instance, Dan Rather and the Bush Pilot Papers which were obvious forgeries).
It's sad that a noble profession has died such an ignoble death.
I think more along the lines of William Shirer, and the Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich. That took a lot of courage!