A federal jury in Manhattan on Tuesday found the New York Times not liable for allegedly defaming Sarah Palin in a 2017 editorial about gun control, dealing the former Republican vice presidential candidate a second loss at trial.
The verdict came in a retrial of Palin’s case, after a federal appeals court threw out a 2022 verdict in the Times’ favor. Palin, 61, who also served as Alaska’s governor, sued the newspaper and former editorial page editor James Bennet over a June 14, 2017, article that wrongly suggested she may have incited a January 2011 mass shooting in an Arizona parking lot.
Six people were killed and Democrat Rep.Gabby Giffords was seriously wounded in the attack.
Bennet said he was under deadline pressure when he added language to “America’s Lethal Politics” that linked the attack to a map from Palin’s political action committee that put Giffords and other Democrats under crosshairs.
The Times quickly acknowledged its mistake and apologized, publishing a correction 14 hours after the editorial appeared online.
Lawyers for Palin said that wasn’t enough because the backtracking didn’t mention her by name.
