Sarah Palin To Take On Media Giant The New York Times Over Their Distasteful 2017 Editorial

Daily Report August 28,2024

Sarah Palin won her bid for a new trial against the New York Times over an editorial that the former Alaska governor said was defamatory.

The 2017 editorial incorrectly established links between Palin and a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona that killed six people and grievously wounded then-Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

In their appeal, Palin’s attorneys argue that U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff erred when he excluded key evidence during the February 2022 trial — long a point of contention between the former Alaska governor and The New York Times in relation to establishing “actual malice,” essentially what public figures must prove against publishers in defamation suits.

They also argue the judge failed to correctly instruct jurors on how this evidence should have been handled, and when it needed to be disregarded.

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The suit, which Palin and media critics have said could test the standard set by a landmark 1964 US Supreme court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan that public figures must prove “actual malice” for defamation, went to trial last month but ended late on Wednesday without a verdict after one day of jury deliberation.

In order to meet this standard, a public figure must demonstrate that the media in fact knew their information was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true.

The case is particularly intriguing to Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, who have signaled interest in revisiting the Sullivan decision because they say that this expansion of cable news and online media has endangered its legal underpinnings at a time when falsehoods spread with far greater speed than ever before.

Titled “America’s Lethal Politics,” the Times editorial — which ran on June 14, 2017 as news was still coming in about a gunman who had opened fire at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia and injured Republican Congressman Steve Scalise among others— mentioned that these actions by persons such as this were only possible because they have easy access to firearms.

The editorial mentioned gun control and the perils of overheated political rhetoric, talking about a 2011 map from Palin’s political action committee that megared bullseyes more than Giffords’ district. Palin pushed back, arguing “that there was a clear link to political incitement,” although the evidence of any influence from her map on Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner is non-existent.

The language in question was written by James Bennet, who at the time served as editorial page editor for The Times; it found its way into the editorial. A day later — after a fusillade of complaints from readers had arrived -—the newspaper corrected itself. Palin had also named Bennet as a defendant in her lawsuit.

Palin, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2008 and Alaska governor from 2006 to 2015, framed her long-shot lawsuit in biblical terms as she cast herself as a David battling a media Goliath.

The New York Times and Bennet defended a statement that there was no effort to tie Palin to the Arizona shooting.

But the judge dismissed it during jury deliberations, finding that Bevin Rutland failed to present any litigation-worthy evidence of malice by The Times. Some jurors, who had been deliberating a few hours when that news alert came in late Friday afternoon, learned of the judge’s decision but said it did not impact their decisions or delay those announcements.