On August 29, 2017, U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, Jed S. Rakoff, dismissed Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against The New York Times. The case was filed in June 2017. Judge Rakoff stated that Ms. Palin's complaint failed to show that a mistake in an editorial was made maliciously.

The suit alleged the newspaper's editorial board maliciously linked the former Alaska governor to a 2011 mass shooting, but the case was dismissed by the defendant's motion setting forth that Ms. Palin failed to put forward plausible evidence of malice.

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: Um, all of 'em, any of 'em that, um, have, have been in front of me over all these years.
 
After apparently reading The New York Times editorial page, in June 2017, Palin sued The Times over an editorial that paralleled the 2011 shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, with an advertisement from Palin's political action committee (PAC).

The editorial was published in June 2017 online the day of the shooting at a congressional baseball practice. The editorial suggested that Jared Lee Loughner, the man who carried out the Tucson massacre, was inspired by Palin's PAC ad that showed a map with cross hairs over the congressional districts of several Democratic lawmakers, including Giffords' district.

There was no evidence that Loughner even saw the map, much less that he was motivated by it. The Times issued a correction the next day, but Palin filed her suit two weeks later.

"How about the rest of us? Right-winging, bitter-clinging, proud clingers of our guns, our God, and our religion, and our Constitution."

Even though The Times offered some contrition for its error, The Times vowed to defend the lawsuit, asserting that the First Amendment protects its writers in such cases. Palin's attorneys set forth the argument that James Bennet, the editorial page editor who wrote the controversial editorial language, had displayed a reckless disregard of the facts, and claimed that The Times received economic gain as an incentive to invoke Palin's name.

Ms. Palin said in the lawsuit that The Times published a number of other articles that contradicted the editorial's premise regarding the motivation of the shooter. "The Times had ample facts available that established that there was no connection between Mrs. Palin and Loughner's crime," she said.
Palin's attorneys also referenced and emphasized the scandalous 2010 column by The New York Times' Charles Blow, who wrote at the time that liberals talk about the former Alaska governor to "drive viewership and Web clicks."

"In fact it's time to drill, baby, drill down, and hold these folks accountable."

In July 2017, The Times filed a motion to dismiss the case.

Judge Rakoff held an unusual evidentiary hearing in August and ordered the author of the editorial, James Bennet, to testify on the basis that a central question he was considering with respect to The Times' motion was whether Ms. Palin's defamation complaint contained "sufficient allegations of actual malice."

The "actual malice" standard for defamation holds that public officials have to show that news outlets knowingly published false information or had acted with "reckless disregard" for the truth.

James Bennet testified that he had no intention of blaming Ms. Palin for the 2011 shooting. Instead, he said, he was trying to make a point about the heated political environment. He also testified that he did a substantial rewrite on the piece after the first draft was filed by Elizabeth Williamson, a member of The Times' editorial board based in Washington, D.C.

Williamson had written that both the 2011 deadly episode in Tucson and the June 2017 shooting in Alexandria, Virginia, which left Rep. Steve Scalise severely hurt, were "nurtured in a vile political climate." In 2011, Williamson wrote, "it was the pro-gun right being criticized" over the ad, which she said "put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs."

"Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably," the editorial read. "In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin's PAC circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs."

At the August hearing, Bennet also testified that the editorial was written under a tight deadline, and that he didn't know whether Loughner had seen the map from Palin's PAC, nor was he aware of the reporting indicating that there was no clear link between Loughner and political incitement. He also said he was shocked to see readers thought the editorial accused Palin of contributing to Loughner's actions.

Of note is the fact that Palin's attorneys Ken Turkel and Shane Vogt also represented pro wrestler Hulk Hogan in his invasion of privacy lawsuit against Gawker last year. They aggressively asserted that Bennet turned "a blind-eye to the truth," and that The Times Editorial Board used the June shooting "as a pulpit to advance their narratives on gun control and political rhetoric."

"Well, and then, funny, ha ha, not funny, but now, what they're doing is wailing."

But Rakoff was unconvinced the corrected editorial was anything more than a mistake: In the exercise of free political journalism, the judge wrote, "mistakes will be made, some of which will be hurtful to others" — but legal redress must be limited to those cases in which the mistake was made "with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard for its falsity."

"Responsible journals will promptly correct their errors; others will not," Rakoff wrote. "But if political journalism is to achieve its constitutionally endorsed role of challenging the powerful, legal redress by a public figure must be limited to those cases where the public figure has a plausible factual basis for complaining that the mistake was made maliciously, that is, with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard of its falsity. Here, plaintiff's complaint, even when supplemented by facts developed at an evidentiary hearing convened by the Court, fails to make that showing."

Rakoff said the evidence offered by Palin's team proved inadequate to proceed.

"What we have here is an editorial, written and rewritten rapidly in order to voice an opinion on an immediate event of importance, in which are included a few factual inaccuracies somewhat pertaining to Mrs. Palin that are very rapidly corrected," Rakoff wrote.

"Negligence this may be," he added, "but defamation of a public figure it plainly is not."

"They stomp on our neck, and then they tell us, 'Just chill, O.K., just relax.' Well, look, we are mad, and we've been had. They need to get used to it."

"Nowhere is political journalism so free, so robust, or perhaps so rowdy as in the United States," Judge Jed Rakoff wrote in an opinion dismissing the case. "In the exercise of that freedom, mistakes will be made, some of which will be hurtful to others."

"Judge Rakoff's opinion is an important reminder of the country's deep commitment to a free press and the important role that journalism plays in our democracy," a Times spokesperson said in a statement. "We regret the errors we made in the editorial. But we were pleased to see that the court acknowledged the importance of the prompt correction we made once we learned of the mistakes. In the words of the court, 'if political journalism is to achieve its constitutionally endorsed role of challenging the powerful, legal redress by a public figure must be limited' to cases where there is something more than an honest mistake."

Each piece of evidence Palin's legal team offered as proof of The Times' intent and ill will 'consists either of gross supposition or of evidence so weak that, even together, these items cannot support the high degree of particularized proof" necessary to proceed with the case, Rakoff said in his ruling Wednesday.

Sarah Palin did not comment on the decision. The above quotes are all original statements by Ms. Palin from this NY Times piece, "The Most Mystifying Lines of Sarah Palin's Endorsement Speech."

A copy of the Palin ruling can be found here.

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