Last Friday, Disney C.E.O. Bob Iger approved a now much-debated decision to settle Donald Trump’s defamation suit against ABC News by way of a $15 million payment to Trump’s presidential library, plus an additional $1 million to cover his legal fees. The decision, which Iger greenlit on the advice of Disney general counsel Horacio Gutierrez, kicked up a predictable shitstorm over the weekend among First Amendment advocates, legal scholars, and Chuck Todd types, who rightly noted that Disney would have been in a strong position to win the case had it not caved, and thus expressed fear over the precedent this might set for the media in the Age of Trump II. As you know, Trump had sued George Stephanopoulos for inaccurately asserting several times on air that the former president had been found “liable for rape” of journalist E. Jean Carroll, when in fact he had been found liable for sexual abuse—a distinction that the judge presiding over the case later dismissed as a technicality. Regardless, Stephanopoulos’s error still seemed to fall well short of the high bar for defamation of a public figure as established 60 years ago by The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Thus, many media observers were upset by Disney’s decision to forfeit the fight. “Iger caved,” one media executive told me this week. “It’s a terrible sign for the news media.” A high-ranking ABC News insider said that while it was “probably the right thing for The Walt Disney Company,” it was nevertheless “tough to swallow as a journalist.” Of course, Disney has obvious incentives for avoiding a nasty, costly, protracted legal battle with the president-elect. And on Wednesday, after sustaining days of scrutiny, it proffered its rationale by way of pieces in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. In brief, Gutierrez & Co. concluded that they had a flawed case that would have been overseen by an unfavorable judge and a potentially biased jury in the largely pro-Trump Southern District of Florida. Upon appeal, Disney and ABC News would still be in a public war with the president while being forced to pay far more in legal fees than the amount of the settlement itself—especially since the case could have been elevated to the Supreme Court, where the justices might have possibly voted to overturn NYT v. Sullivan. (At least, that was a risk that Gutierrez was managing…) Given all the various pains in the ass for Disney, the real question, as my partner Eriq Gardner has rightly noted, is why Trump agreed to settle for a relative pittance, instead of putting the wood to Iger and ABC at trial. The stated motivations are all true, to be sure, but the Times and Journal pieces glossed over one other key consideration. On Friday, the judge in the case, Cecilia M. Altonaga, ordered depositions of both Trump and Stephanopoulos, and ruled that Disney must produce all relevant text messages and emails sent to and from the ABC News anchor. According to well-placed sources at Disney and close to Stephanopoulos, there was extremely high concern among leadership over the release of Stephanopoulos’s correspondence and how it might expose the anchor, the news network, and the parent company to greater scrutiny. “He is sloppy electronically,” one source said of Stephanopoulos. “They didn’t want the phone going into discovery.” (Of course, Disney has had its share of Stephanopoulos-related controversies, including the disclosure of a $75,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation in 2015 and his off-the-cuff remark earlier this year about Biden’s fitness for office.) Coincidentally, an ABC News spokesperson told me today that Stephanopoulos has just signed a new, multiyear contract with the network, unrelated to the timing of the settlement. Several insiders speculated that Stephanopoulos’s new deal includes a pay cut, and noted that he is likely to eventually take on a more limited role, after already ceding pole-anchor position on special event coverage to David Muir. Disney is trying to lower costs across its linear portfolio, including at ABC’s Good Morning America, where Stephanopoulos and his co-anchors Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan have historically made around $25 million a year—a gross misalignment of funds, given the declining audience for morning television, generally, and particularly in light of GMA’s ratings slide since Almin Karamehmedovic became president of ABC News. Presumably, Stephanopoulos’s heir apparent, Whit Johnson, would deliver similar ratings and cost a lot less. Indeed, that is where things seem to be headed—albeit with the discretion and diplomatic finesse befitting a revered network veteran who, despite his slip-ups, has earned the right to an elegant exit. Also, as you all know, television news is a business wherein executives and talent air kiss each other at lunch but complain ceaselessly about one another in private—their own version of being “electronically sloppy.” George may be headed toward his next act as a public figure, but no one wants to be the person responsible for it.