A retrial of the yearslong defamation case brought by Sarah Palin against The New York Times got underway before a Manhattan jury on Tuesday.
Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor and onetime Republican vice-presidential nominee, sued The Times in 2017 over an editorial that erroneously linked her campaign’s language to a mass shooting, which she claimed defamed her.
A federal judge and a jury both ruled against her in a 2022 trial of the case, but Ms. Palin successfully appealed and a new trial was ordered. The same judge, Jed S. Rakoff, is hearing the case again. The arguments are largely the same, but the media landscape in the United States is very different. There have been several high-profile defamation cases that have resulted in multimillion-dollar payouts. And President Trump has continued his multipronged attack on the news media.
In opening statements on Tuesday, lawyers for each side presented arguments over whether The Times had knowingly published a false statement about Ms. Palin. To clear the legal hurdle for defamation, a public figure must prove that the defendant acted with actual malice, or published something despite knowing it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth.
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This case centers on a 2017 editorial published by The Times’s editorial board, which is separate from the newsroom, and headlined “America’s Lethal Politics.” It condemned violent political rhetoric in the wake of a gunman’s opening fire on a congressional baseball practice.
The editorial made reference to a 2011 mass shooting that seriously wounded Representative Gabby Giffords and killed six people. Before the shooting, Ms. Palin’s political action committee had put out an ad with stylized cross hairs over some Democratic-controlled congressional districts. The editorial incorrectly made a link between the map and the shooting.
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