Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful
by David Enrich
View on GoodreadsNYT editor David Enrich's 2025 investigation of the coordinated legal campaign to weaken NYT v. Sullivan — the 1964 Supreme Court decision that protects journalism from libel weaponization by public figures — and the specific lawyers, judges, and donors driving it.
Core ideas
- The Sullivan standard ("actual malice" required for public-figure defamation) has been the load-bearing legal protection for accountability journalism for 60 years; the campaign to overturn it has been more advanced than the public coverage suggests.
- The campaign is the same network that produced Pipeline to Power's judicial-capture project — same donors, same legal organizations, with the same long-horizon patience to keep cases in the pipeline until one reaches the Court at the right moment.
- The economic terrorism effect is the book's near-term concern — even cases that lose, when filed against small newsrooms, can destroy the publication through legal costs alone; this is happening now, with Sullivan still in place.
Published2025
Pages592
ISBN9780063433038
ReadJan 2026
