The judge quoted 'grasping at straws.' Trump is appealing anyway.
Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch personally over a 2023 article reporting that Trump had sent Jeffrey Epstein a birthday letter. A federal judge dismissed the case with prejudice on Saturday, meaning no further amended complaints in district court. The ruling found Trump failed to plausibly allege the Journal published anything it knew to be false. What the coverage mostly skipped: Murdoch is a named defendant, and the president of the United States is now appealing a defamation loss against his own party's most powerful media patron.
Judge dismisses Trump's defamation lawsuit against Wall Street Journal over Epstein letter
9 sources · hover a dot to see coverage
What happened
A federal judge dismissed President Trump's defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch on Saturday, October 31, 2026. The suit stemmed from a WSJ article reporting that Trump had sent a birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. The judge ruled Trump failed to plausibly allege actual malice, the legal standard for public figures under New York Times v. Sullivan, meaning Trump could not show the Journal published the story knowing it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth. The dismissal was with prejudice, barring Trump from filing a revised complaint in district court. Trump's legal team announced plans to appeal. The AP's headline quoted the judge directly: 'grasping at straws.' Nine outlets covered the ruling, with meaningful variation in how prominently they named Murdoch as a defendant and how much they explained the with-prejudice consequence.
CNBC named Murdoch as a defendant in the headline; almost no one else did
CNBC's headline reads 'Trump defamation suit against Murdoch, WSJ over Epstein letter dismissed with prejudice,' making Murdoch's personal exposure the lead. It also explained the with-prejudice consequence clearly: Trump cannot file another amended version in district court. That combination of facts, Murdoch named, the procedural door closed, appears together in one outlet. Axios mentioned Murdoch in its headline as well, though its excerpt cut off before explaining the prejudice ruling. The rest of the coverage treated Murdoch as a background detail, if it mentioned him at all.
AP used the judge's own language; that quote set the tone everywhere
The AP's headline lifted the judge's phrase directly: 'Grasping at straws.' That language traveled. Because AP wire copy feeds so many downstream outlets, the characterization of the judge's skepticism became the dominant register of the story's coverage, even in outlets that didn't quote the ruling themselves. Reason's Volokh Conspiracy went further into the legal mechanics, explaining that Trump failed to 'adequately allege facts supporting a showing' of actual malice, which is the specific doctrinal gap the appeal will have to bridge.
Two sources in the payload are not about this case at all
The Al Jazeera and Reuters entries in this group cover separate stories entirely: Al Jazeera on data scientists challenging Trump's non-citizen voter claims in California, Reuters on ICE raids in a California swing district. Neither is about the WSJ dismissal. Their presence here is a signal that the payload was assembled by topic proximity, not editorial curation. Nothing in either piece bears on the Epstein lawsuit ruling.
What one side told you that the other didn't
Murdoch is a named defendant. Most headlines omit him.
CNBC and Axios both named Murdoch in their headlines. The remaining outlets, AP, CNN, SAN, Reason, framed this as Trump versus the Wall Street Journal, an institution. Murdoch personally is a different story: a sitting president pursuing a defamation claim against the chairman of the media company that owns Fox News, the Journal, and the New York Post. That detail changes the political texture of the case considerably. Leaving it in the body text rather than the headline is a choice that shapes what most readers take away.
Dismissed with prejudice means the district court door is closed. Few said so.
CNBC explicitly explained the with-prejudice consequence: no further amended complaints in district court. The AP, CNN, SAN, and Reason did not spell this out in their available excerpts. The distinction matters because 'dismissed' without that qualifier can read as a temporary setback. With prejudice means Trump's only remaining path is the appellate courts, which is where his team says they are headed. Readers who got the wire version without the procedural gloss got a softer picture of how final Saturday's ruling actually was.
The appeal is announced. No outlet asked what appellate argument survives.
Every outlet that mentioned the appeal treated it as a closing line. Trump's legal team said he plans to appeal; story ends. Reason came closest to explaining the legal gap Trump faces, noting he failed to allege facts supporting actual malice. But no outlet in this group examined what theory of the case survives dismissal with prejudice well enough to reach the circuit court. For a ruling this procedurally final, the announced appeal is the next news event, and the coverage left readers with no framework for evaluating whether it has any realistic chance.
What to watch
Trump's legal team has announced an appeal. When they file with the circuit court, watch whether the appellate brief introduces any new factual theory of actual malice or simply re-argues the district court record. If the brief is thin on new facts, expect the same outlets that buried Murdoch's name to treat the appeal as a one-paragraph item. If the brief names Murdoch's editorial involvement directly, that changes the story's political valence fast.
See how outlets across the political spectrum framed this differently — and what each side left out.