Thursday, February 10, 2022

Palin Testifies In Defamation Case vs NYTimes


Sarah Palin portrayed herself as a dedicated public servant in testimony in her defamation case against the New York Times, after a former editor who oversaw the 2017 editorial underlying her lawsuit on Wednesday denied trying to blame the prominent Republican for a 2011 mass shooting.

Reuters reports Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate, appeared only briefly on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court, and is expected to return on Thursday.

James Bennet, a former Times editorial page editor, earlier testified that changes he made to a draft of the editorial, which the Times later corrected, were not meant to hold Palin or her political action committee responsible for the 2011 shooting.

"Did you intend to cause Ms. Palin any harm through any of your edits to the draft?" the Times' lawyer David Axelrod asked Bennet during the trial's fifth day in Manhattan federal court.

"No, I didn't," Bennet responded.

Bennet also said "no" when asked if he tried to blame Palin or the political action committee. Bennet said he moved quickly to correct the editorial as criticism mounted that its wording suggested they were to blame.

"We don't promise to be perfect, we promise to try our damnedest to be perfect, and when we're not we try to fix it," Bennet testified.

On the witness stand, Palin, 57, discussed her family, her background and being chosen by 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain as his running mate.

"I don't think they were prepared for me, necessarily, because I was new to the national stage," Palin said.

The trial is a test of longstanding legal protections for U.S. media against defamation claims by public figures.

To win, Palin must prove that Bennet and the Times acted with "actual malice," meaning they knew the editorial was false or had reckless disregard for the truth.

Palin sued over a June 14, 2017, editorial, headlined "America's Lethal Politics," that addressed gun control and lamented the deterioration of political discourse.

It was written after a shooting at a Virginia baseball field where congressman Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, was wounded.

The editorial referred to the January 2011 shooting in an Arizona parking lot by gunman Jared Lee Loughner where six people died and Gabrielle Giffords, then a Democratic congresswoman, was among those wounded.

It referred to Palin's political action committee having earlier circulated a map that put Giffords and 19 other Democrats under cross hairs.

Bennet added incorrect language that said "the link to political incitement was clear" between the map and the Giffords shooting. The editorial was corrected the next day.

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