Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lost her defamation case against The New York Times on Tuesday for the third time, a high-stakes suit that First Amendment advocates have cautioned risks paring away protections for the press.
Jurors found the newspaper not liable for defamation less than three hours into their deliberations following a weeklong trial.
The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, who got another chance to try the case she lost in 2022 when the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals last year found errors plagued the first trial and reinstated it, alleged that an inaccuracy in a June 2017 Times editorial damaged her reputation.
In 2022, Manhattan Federal Judge Jed Rakoff, who presided over both trials, decided The Times was not liable for defamation while jurors were deliberating, finding the error amounted to unfortunate editorializing but not libel. Jurors ultimately reached the same conclusion but learned of Rakoff’s ruling from push alerts in the jury room, which was part of why the case was sent back for a do-over.
During a rapid dash out of the courthouse, a somber Palin said she was looking forward to returning to Alaska and did not yet know if she’d appeal.
“I get to go home to a beautiful family of five kids and grandkids and beautiful property and get on with life, and that’s nice,” she told the Daily News.
In a statement, Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said, “We want to thank the jurors for their careful deliberations. The decision reaffirms an important tenet of American law: publishers are not liable for honest mistakes.”
The editorial at the center of the suit, “America’s Lethal Politics,” argued heated political rhetoric could influence gun violence in the U.S. after a gunman opened fire at a congressional baseball game, seriously wounding Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise)
Former Times editor James Bennet added the details to the writer Elizabeth Williamson’s article about a digital graphic put out by Palin’s political action committee in 2011 before former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Az.) was shot and paralyzed in a mass shooting in which six were killed. He inaccurately described the graphic as featuring stylized crosshairs over Giffords and other Democratic officials when it depicted crosshairs over their electoral districts.
In her closing argument earlier Tuesday, a lawyer for The Times, Felicia Ellsworth, asked the jury to reject Palin’s arguments as “just another opportunity to take on the fake news.” Palin’s lawyer, Ken Turkel, said the error was not an “honest mistake about a passing reference,” but for Palin, “a life changer.” He said the newspaper had greater responsibility than other media outlets as “the world’s most authoritative news organization.”
“If someone is going to lie about you, you cannot pick a worse organization,” he said. He added that the editorial came when Palin was not running for office or otherwise in the spotlight but just “trying to live her life” and make money doing speaking engagements.
Ellsworth noted that Palin had not requested damages to repay supposed lost earnings for the engagements or offered a single witness to show she was harmed.
“She’s not seeking those damages because she doesn’t have them,” the lawyer said. “She hasn’t hired anyone to fix the supposed harm (to) her reputation. She didn’t identify a single person who told her they believed she caused the Arizona shooting as a result of the 2017 editorial.”
Within 14 hours, the error was fixed. A correction said that no link had ever been established between political rhetoric and the shooting of Giffords and noted the editorial had incorrectly described the graphic.
Turkel said The Times’s decision not to name Palin in the correction was part of the reason she brought suit, saying doing so would have been “common respect.”
“She just doesn’t matter to them,” he said.
Turkel, who represented wrestler Hulk Hogan in his defamation suit against Gawker Media that led to the shuttering of the popular gossip blog, seemed to acknowledge that Bennet may not have known the detail was inaccurate. He said the editor should have, having had the relevant information “at his fingertips.”
Ellsworth said Palin’s lawyers had failed to prove Bennet acted with “actual malice,” meaning he knew the detail was false but included it anyway. She noted that Bennet acted as soon as he realized the inaccuracy, “not the actions of a person who was purposely avoiding the truth.”
Like when Hogan’s suit was brought, First Amendment advocates have cautioned Palin’s case could be intended as a vehicle to ultimately get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a landmark 1964 ruling in a case also involving The Times, which set a high bar for public officials who try to sue journalists over coverage they don’t like byrequiring they prove any errors were intentional.
It comes as the Trump administration has aggressively ramped up attacks on the media, filing mammoth lawsuits against ABC and CBS over coverage Trump disapproved of, seeking to curtail White House access for The Associated Press and expanding access to non-traditional, right-wing media outlets and bloggers who support him.
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