Sarah Palin’s case against The NY Times was dismissed by a New York judge since he did not find malice, a difficult term to define legally. It isn’t enough that the Times deliberately defamed her, she had to prove they did it with malice. The judge dismissed it while the jury was considering the case. Even more questionable, the jury was notified of his decision before they came up with their decision, finding for the Times.
THE STORY
After the Jared Lee Lochner shooting of Gabby Giffords and the killing of six people, The NY Times falsely accused Sarah Palin of causing the slaughter by inciting Lochner with a typical fundraising ad sent around swing districts with targets over various Democrats running for office, including Giffords. It was a graphic Democrats also used.
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The Times accusation was absurd on the face of it. There was no evidence Lochner even saw it or anything by Palin. Lochner, a madman, had a very different reason.
Lochner had asked then-US Rep. Giffords how she could answer his question when words mean nothing. He didn’t like her answer and plotted her murder. He then killed six people, and nearly killed Giffords.
It quickly became clear that the attack on Palin was absurd and the Times walked it back.
Prior to the Giffords’ assault, James Hodgkinson planned and executed a mass shooting of Republican congressmen as they practiced for an annual baseball game with Democrats. Republicans blamed the Hodgkinson shooting on Democrat rhetoric which was very heated at the time.
Democrats decided to attack Republicans for the Giffords shooting which followed and, in 2017, James Bennett, the editorial editor of the Times — despite their own newspaper debunking the story — published an op-ed claiming Palin caused the attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords.
The Times and other legacy media use op-eds to get their unsubstantiated stories out.
The Times wrote:
Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, 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. At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs…
The Times clearly called her a killer and that stuck with her for a long time. They did defame her — of that, there is no doubt.
Violent Democrat Rhetoric? What violent Rhetoric?
The Times claimed during the trial that they wanted to be even-handed but couldn’t find examples of violent Democratic rhetoric. At the time, Alan Grayson was screaming about Republicans wanting Democrats to die. The DNC ran ads of Paul Ryan pushing grandma off a cliff. Barack Obama told his supporters to bring guns to a knife fight, get in your neighbors face to fight – Republicans are your enemy. There were others, but The NY Times couldn’t find them.
They also claimed there were many Republican examples but they only found one — Sarah Palin — and it was completely untrue.
The Times minimized the Hodgkinson attack just before the attack on Giffords because he was a Bernie Sanders’ supporter. The media, in general, made the story disappear. Not so with the Palin as a killer story. Thanks to the Times, it went on and on through the many news media that regurgitate its tales.
Then a judge sent a jury to decide if Sarah Palin was defamed and deserved an award. Before they could decide, the judge dismissed the case, tampering with the jury’s decision.
Insider reported that “Jurors in Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times say they got notifications on their phones that the case had been dismissed before reaching a verdict.”
The judge made certain the jury abandoned the case. Meanwhile, The NY Times did defame her but the judge didn’t find malice. Yet, it was all about malice.
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