The trial is over, and now the jury deliberations have begun in the case of Sarah Palin versus the New York Times.

An honest assessment of the facts would probably lead the jury to rule that the Times did indeed libel Palin in their editorial. But this is a Manhattan court and jury, so nothing is guaranteed for either side. This case has been ongoing almost since the publication of the editorial in question after the Congressional baseball shooting in 2017, which led to the deposition of now-former Times editorial page editor James Bennet in 2017 being added to the trial record. Let’s just say that Bennet has never been able to explain his thinking – he admitted to being the author of the “political incitement” line – as to why the use of that phrase, in terms of the Gabby Giffords shooting, should have been added to the editorial.

Q. Could you explain what you meant by the term “political incitement” when you wrote this?”

A. Yeah. There are a couple of things at work there. One, I had been very much affected by and was thinking about that day a column that a colleague of mine, Tom Friedman, had written
during the course of the presidential campaign — the last presidential campaign. Then candidate Donald Trump had at a rally and in a speech — I won’t get the words exactly correct — had said something to the effect that, well, maybe the Second Amendment people can do something about Hillary Clinton. And Tom had made a connection that day that I did not make. He had said that — he wrote a piece saying basically to hold on. I have seen this movie before. This is the kind of language that was heard at the runup to the assassination of Rabin. We need to take this kind of stuff very seriously.”

And then that morning in June this terrible thing had happened. Right? We had actually seen the Congressman come under fire on this field in Virginia. And I was looking for a very strong word to write about the political climate because I wanted to get our readers’ attention. This is a word that we do use sometimes; we don’t use it every day. We use lots of strong expressions like “inflammatory rhetoric,” things like that. Those aren’t actually quite as powerful expression as it has been largely drained of its power because it is used so often, “incendiary rhetoric,” so on and so forth.”

Also, I was thinking about — the way I view that particular word from is in my experience in one of my roles at the time that I was a correspondent in Jerusalem at one point for The Times, and the word “incitement” is used there by the Israelis — in my time by the Israelis about the Palestinians but also, to some degree, by the Palestinians about the Israelis to talk about a range of communications from, you know, to deliberate orders, invocations, summonses for people to carry out violent attacks to textbooks that are published that align important facts from the other side’s national narrative or history, to tell outright lies about that history, to maps that misrepresent the politics of the region. And that’s specifically where I was drawing that word from.”

Anyone get a decent explanation from that word salad? Nope? Okay then.

THE COURT: Well, maybe I am asking a more narrow question. I am asking a question about grammar and sentence structure, which presumably you have some expertise in. The sentence in its entirety reads: “In 2011, when 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, the link to political incitement was clear.” Doesn’t that mean as a matter of ordinary English grammar and usage that that sentence is saying that the shooting in 2011 was clearly linked to political incitement?”

THE WITNESS: That is not what I intended it to mean. I understand what you’re saying, your Honor. But what I was thinking of was of the link between the victim and the overall climate, that there was actually an example of political incitement that we could point to in that case to create a link between the victim and the incitement. I wasn’t — what I wasn’t trying to say was that there was a causal link between — a direct causal link between this map and the shooting.”

Sure. What happened was that James Bennet (the case says “New York Times” because they were Bennet’s employer at the time, but the sole defendent is Bennet himself) thought he was SO CLEVER in adding that “political incitement” line, and then when the editorial blew up, the emails among the staff were looking for an escape hatch.

The exchanges changed tone the following morning when the editors realized they may have made a mistake. In an email to (editorial board member Jesse) Wegman, (editorial section journalist Elizabeth) Williamson said that Bennett “would like to check what the truth is here.”

Bennet asked Williamson just after 5 a.m. to start drafting a correction, Politico reported.”

Bennett texted Williamson he felt “lousy’”and that he had “just moved too fast” in publishing the piece. According to court documents, Bennet added the lines about political incitement over which Palin later sued.”

“We may have relied too heavily on our earlier editorials and other early coverage of the attack,” Bennet said in an email.”

That afternoon, Wegman said he “made the case that talking about Palin and Giffords in the same graf (paragraph) looked like we were still trying to sneak the link in,” in an email to Williamson. He said Bennet told him to leave the connection there in order for the next paragraph to make sense.”

As the New York Post‘s Kyle Smith points out, what this does prove is that the Times lives within its own head, where they are always right and Palin is always wrong.

Bennet lives in a world where everyone “knew” Palin’s team had a “clear” link to the shooting. He had probably read so many left-wing columns and blogs blaming Palin that he simply internalized the information and didn’t bother to check it. The fact-checker glossed over the false assertion also, because she was too overworked to do her job. (“I was checking things fast on deadline … my reading of it led me not to have looked at that specifically . . . I did the best of my ability in the time that I had.”)

For all The Times stories bemoaning that Americans increasingly live in “bubbles” of “misinformation,” it never seemed to look at the bubble inside its own newspaper.”

It fell to Ross Douthat, one of the only conservatives in the entire Times army, to email Bennet that his claim was incorrect after it had been published. Which is why the Times could use someone like Douthat to read its claims before they get published.”

And now the case is in the jury’s hands.

They deliberated a couple of hours on Friday before going home for the weekend, and will resume deliberations on Monday. Meanwhile, the media is lamenting that Palin could even get this far over an “unintentional error” (oh really) and that this is… wait for it… an attack on free speech.

The case centers on a 2017 New York Times editorial about dangerous rhetoric and political violence.

At stake are free speech protections for reporters and their news organizations. https://t.co/I4mZDcut5N

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) February 12, 2022

As many have pointed out, why do these “errors” always go in one direction, then? A mystery, that.

Did Palin actually suffer damage to her reputation with this editorial? Probably not, but that’s only because the damage was done back in 2011, when this particular lie was allowed to take root in the brains of the left wing media who wanted to make sure Palin had no political future. Suing the Times over this editorial is all about a moral point, and both sides know it. Palin should win and be awarded $1, because this is not a case about money. This is about getting the New York Times to admit that they screwed up. However, will a Manhattan jury see it this way? We will find out soon enough.

Featured image: Sarah Palin via Wikimedia Commons, cropped, Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)