We should be concerned about ABC News recently settling a suit brought against it and “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos by Donald Trump.

The genesis of the suit is an interview that Stephanopoulos conducted in March, with U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina. Mace, a rape victim, was questioned by Stephanopoulos as to how she could support Trump, whom the anchor said had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.

Trump took umbrage with Stephanopoulos’ characterization, suing him and ABC. Rather than go to trial, ABC settled the suit, agreeing to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential library foundation.

What we have here is a semantic disagreement, and a major news network buckling to the Bully-in-Chief. Trump was found liable of sexual assault against Ms. Carroll and ordered to pay her millions. The judge in the case said that the verdict found that Trump had raped Ms. Carroll “according to the common definition of the word.”

Call me old fashioned, but sexual assault of a woman is rape and vice versa. ABC was wrong to have settled and should have fought.

Justice Potter Stewart believed that the press was a surrogate of the people. As such, the Fourth Estate is our eyes, our ears and our voice. During the next four years, we need a press willing to really push back, to ask the tough questions, and call out Trump’s ubiquitous lies.

We need a Watergate-era press — at all levels. We need today’s equivalent of Woodward, Bernstein, Sam Donaldson, Barbara Walters and Dan Rather. In New York Times v. United States, the majority justices agreed that “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”

As Thomas Jefferson said, “When the speech condemns a free press, you are hearing the words of a tyrant.”

Kirk J. Dodson

Duncansville