Trump loses against the "WSJ": is the press referee or mere guardian?

According to Le Monde, a US court has dismissed the defamation suit brought by Donald Trump against the Wall Street Journal. The paper had published the contents of a letter with a salacious tone, dated 2003, addressed to Jeffrey Epstein and attributed to the Republican billionaire. In his ruling, Judge Darrin P. Gayles steers clear of deciding whether the letter is authentic. He does find, however, that the journalists conducted proper checks and acted in good faith in publishing it.

That is where what we know from established sources ends. The rest is our reading.

First, note the elegance of the mechanism: the court does not say "the letter is true", it says "the paper worked as a paper should work". The criterion is not truth, it is procedure. This is perfectly reasonable, and that is precisely what deserves a closer look. For in Gramsci's view, hegemony is not imposed by force alone: it settles in once a way of doing things simply seems normal. Here, professional "good faith", the thorough investigation and the cross-checking are the norm everyone recognises. The judge invents nothing; he observes that an institution has respected its own rituals.

We would be wrong to see in this a simple victory of good over evil. The fact that a immensely wealthy man, both former and present central figure of power, is the one losing here does not mean the press sits on the side of the dominated. The Journal is a company, owned by a group that belongs to the very ecosystem it scrutinises. When it wins, what is also strengthened is confidence in a certain framework: that of an "independent" press serving as the natural referee of the elites. The quarrel is played out between factions of the ruling classes: one brandishes press freedom, the other the threat of litigation. Common sense, meanwhile, watches the match from the stands.

The concepts of ideology remind us of this: an ideology is not a lie, it is a partial image presented as universal. The figure of the serious journalist who investigates in good faith is, in this case, true, probably. It becomes ideological when it makes us forget who owns the newsrooms, who decides the subjects, and why one scandal touches one powerful figure and not another.

What remains unknown weighs heavily: the authenticity of the letter officially remains open, and we do not know whether an appeal is being considered. The ruling protects the paper without closing the question. The press is cleared on method, not on substance, and the Epstein affair keeps illustrating how information about the powerful depends on their tolerance, or their weariness, towards those who write about them.