Our legal costs are climbing. Will you donate $5?

When Donald Trump sued ABC News for defamation, ABC’s parent company, Disney, settled for $15 million.

That kind of payout might not register as a major expense for Disney, but for a nonprofit news outlet like The Intercept, it would be devastating.

To ensure we can continue to provide the same hard-hitting, adversarial investigative journalism in the face of these rising legal threats, this year we need to increase our media liability insurance policy — and that won’t be cheap.

That’s why we’re asking you today: Will you donate $5 to meet this new expense and ensure that The Intercept’s hard-hitting investigative journalism can flourish into the future?

Donald Trump isn’t the only litigious billionaire threatening the news media.

In 2020, The Intercept was sued by billionaire mercenary Erik Prince, the founder of the private security firm Blackwater. The case was eventually thrown out, but only after a yearslong legal fight that cost us more than $200,000 and countless hours of staff time.

But now we’re facing a White House that is openly hostile to the free press in a way we’ve never seen. Trump’s pick for FBI director has pledged to “come after” journalists who Trump calls “the enemy of the people.”

We’d be fools not to prepare for potentially long and costly legal fights in the face of a federal government weaponized against the free press.

And even without rising legal costs, these are incredibly challenging times for the journalism industry.

Last year, 4,902 news industry jobs were eliminated nationwide, a 59 percent jump from the previous year and the most since the pandemic year of 2020. From 2008 through 2020, the total number of people employed as journalists in the U.S. declined by 26 percent.

Please donate $5 to help support The Intercept.

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