WJFW Wausau

Northland Television tells a judge that Donald J. Trump for President has now lost standing to pursue its libel suit against its WJFW Wausau, Wis., over a “hoax.”

The Priorities USA super PAC has been given a judicial OK to join a legal battle between Trump’s financially flush Republican reelection campaign and WJFW Wausau-Rhinelander, Wis. (DMA 134), which is being sued for airing a Priorities USA ad.

The owner of the NBC affiliate in Wausau, Wis., gives four big reasons why a judge should throw out a libel claim concerning the president’s coronavirus response.

The organizations — the Big 4 affiliate groups, the RTNDA, the Media Institute and the Society of Professional Journalists — say that the paid anti-Trump ad it aired was the very stuff of American politics and fully protected by the First Amendment.

The Trump campaign has targeted a small Wisconsin station in a libel suit over a super PAC ad. Its fellow broadcasters need to step up now by coming to its defense and fending off a critical assault on their First Amendment rights.

Donald Trump’s campaign sued the Wausau-Rhinelander, Wis., CBS affiliate on Monday after it continued to air an ad from a pro-Joe Biden super PAC that attacks the President’s response to the coronavirus crisis. The spot features a graph mapping coronavirus cases in the U.S. over the past two months, with audio of comments Trump has made downplaying the threat of the virus.