Sarah Palin on Tuesday lost in the retrial of her defamation case against the New York Times – a second defeat in the efforts by the former Republican vice-presidential candidate.
A federal jury in New York deliberated for two hours then found the newspaper not liable for allegedly defaming Palin in a 2017 editorial about gun control. Palin appeared dejected as she left the courthouse in Manhattan.
The case garnered much attention not just because Palin and the Times are household names across the US but because it raised broader issues about free speech in the era of the return of Donald Trump, who relishes repeatedly calling the mainstream media versions of the “enemy of the people”.
It also highlighted the issue of malice as a legal standard that requires the plaintiff in such a case to prove that false information was published about them either knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth.
The verdict came in the retrial of Palin’s case, after a federal appeals court threw out a 2022 verdict that came down in favor of the New York Times.
Palin, 61, who also served as Alaska’s governor, sued the newspaper and former editorial page editor James Bennet over an article that inaccurately suggested she may have incited a January 2011 mass shooting in an Arizona parking lot.
Six people were killed and the Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords was seriously wounded in the attack, with others also injured, as she held an open-air session outside a supermarket in the Tucson area to talk with constituents.
The editorial piece about gun control, citing that earlier mass shooting, was published after the Republican congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana was wounded when a man with a history of anti-Republican party activity opened fire on a congressional baseball team practice in Washington DC in 2017.
Bennet said he was under deadline pressure when he added language to the column headlined “America’s Lethal Politics” that linked the attack to a map from Palin’s political action committee that put images of Giffords and other Democrats under crosshairs.
The newspaper quickly acknowledged its mistake and apologized, publishing a correction 14 hours after the editorial appeared online.
Palin said she experienced an increase in death threats against her after the erroneous reference in the column. Despite appearing sullen upon leaving court, she then told reporters: “I get to go home to a beautiful family of five kids and grandkids and a beautiful property and get on with life. And that’s nice.”
She added that she had not yet discussed with her lawyers whether to appeal.
A tearful Bennet apologized to Palin from the witness stand when he testified last week, saying he was tormented by the error and worked urgently to correct it after readers complained to the newspaper.
Lawyers for Palin said the paper’s apology at the time was not enough because the backtracking did not mention her by name. In her closing argument, the Times’s lawyer Felicia Ellsworth alluded to the high burden that Palin, a public figure, had in order to hold the newspaper liable.
“To win this case, Governor Palin needs to prove that the New York Times and James Bennet did not care about the truth,” she said. “There has not been one shred of evidence showing anything other than an honest mistake.”
She added: “To Governor Palin, this is just another opportunity to take on ‘fake news’. To James Bennet, the truth matters.”
But Palin’s lawyer Ken Turkel said: “This is not an honest mistake about a passing reference … For her, it was a life-changer.” Palin lost her first trial in 2022, but the second US circuit court of appeals last year said the verdict was tainted by rulings from the presiding judge. The case has been seen by Palin and other conservatives as a possible vehicle to overturn the US supreme court’s 1964 landmark New York Times v Sullivan ruling, which established the “actual malice” standard.
The second circuit, however, said Palin waived the argument by waiting too long to challenge that standard.
Reuters contributed reporting
