Sarah Palin vs. NY Times Libel Trial Update Day 5 – Palin Takes the Stand
“giving the jury a folksy overview of her family life in Alaska and ascent in Republican politics”
Sarah Palin took the stand on Wednesday in her libel case against the New York Times. Her testimony was mostly about what her life is like now.
Tom Hays reports at the Associated Press:
Palin takes witness stand in libel case vs. New York Times
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took the witness stand on Wednesday in her defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, giving the jury a folksy overview of her family life in Alaska and ascent in Republican politics.
Palin testified for only about 20 minutes at the end of the day at a civil trial in Manhattan federal court after a Times editor named as a defendant in the suit testified at length.
She is to return to court Thursday for a chance to get into the crux of the case — her claim that the newspaper damaged her reputation with an editorial linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting. Closing arguments are set for Friday.
Palin, 57, described herself for jurors as a single mother and grandmother who “holds down the fort” for her family in Alaska when not advising candidates about “the good, bad and ugly” of politics. She also recalled the surprise over her emergence as a vice-presidential candidate in 2008, saying, “I don’t think they were prepared for me.”
Former NY Times editor James Bennet was back on the stand briefly as well. Everything that I have read about his testimony so far indicates that the NY Times knows it made a huge mistake here.
Josh Gerstein wrote at Politico:
Former NYT editor: Concern over false-equivalence critique prompted flaw in Palin editorial
As the trial entered its fifth day on Wednesday, former Times editorial editor James Bennet testified that he was trying to avoid just those sorts of pitfalls when he inserted language in a 2017 editorial that many readers saw as asserting a direct link between the former Alaska governor’s political action committee and a deadly 2011 mass shooting in Arizona.
In his second and final day on the witness stand in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, Bennet said the passages Palin’s lawyers have seized on were inspired by his desire to avoid a specious “both sides” claim that extreme political rhetoric is as prevalent in America on the left as on the right.
Bennet indicated that controversy over the erroneous claim about a connection to Palin’s PAC was particularly galling to him because, after taking over the Times’ opinion pages a year earlier, he was trying to allay perceptions that those pages were unfair to Republicans.
“It was a mistake … that made it look like we were being partisan,” Bennet said.
Newsflash for Mr. Bennet: The NY Times is partisan, and it’s obvious to everyone. This is why I recently said that the NY Times is relying on a benefit of the doubt that they do not deserve.
Bennet is basically trying to take the fall for the Times.
Ben Feuerherd reports at the New York Post:
Ex-New York Times editor takes blame for Sarah Palin error at defamation trial
James Bennet, the former New York Times editorial page editor, said Tuesday that he was at fault for writing language into a 2017 piece falsely asserting a connection between a map circulated by Sarah Palin’s political action committee and a mass shooting that wounded US Rep. Gabby Giffords.
Bennet took responsibility for the error while testifying at the Manhattan federal court trial in the defamation suit Palin brought against the newspaper over the editorial.
“This is my fault, right. I wrote those sentences,” Bennet said while responding to questioning by Palin’s attorney, Shane Vogt.
Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat also took the stand:
Times columnist Ross Douthat just took the stand in the trial over Sarah Palin's lawsuit.
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) February 9, 2022
Douthat is now being questioned about his column about the "kerfuffle" over Shakespeare in the Park's production of "Julius Caesar," with a Trumpish title character.
The controversy was, of course, that Caesar is assassinated, Douthat notes. https://t.co/4ICc5qRLrf
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) February 9, 2022
Questioning turns to the email he sent Bennet expressing his "bafflement" about the Palin column.
He pointed to what he thought was "Loughner's extreme mental illness as the only cause" of the shooting.
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) February 9, 2022
Douthat testifies that he became aware of the Palin editorial via Twitter, where people were criticizing its link between SarahPAC and the 2011 Loughner shooting. He felt he could convey "important information" to Bennet about the editorial.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 9, 2022
Palin attorney Ken Turkel is walking Douthat through that email. Yesterday another Palin attorney asked James Bennet why the Times didn't move to unpublish the Palin editorial after learning about the factual pushback.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 9, 2022
Douthat testifying about how he sent links to Bennet from non-conservative voices on Twitter who had taken issue with the NYT Palin editorial, to show the level of consensus on this point.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 9, 2022
Douthat testifies that he wrote less and less about Palin as time went on as she receded from view on the national political stage.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 9, 2022
Previous reports:
- Jury Sees Damning Internal Emails In Sarah Palin’s Libel Case Against NY Times
- Sarah Palin vs. NY Times Libel Trial Update Day 4: Former Editor Cross-Examined On Use Of Term “Incitement”
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
It strikes me as odd that these fucking fucks never thought of the obvious way to avoid fuckups like this was to NOT make the fucking fuckup to begin with.
Anyone capable of rubbing two or more LIVE brain cells together knew from the very fucking beginning that there was no incitement here…NONE at fucking all.
Yet these fucking fucks hatred of Palin and all things not Democrat meant they wouldnt see there was no fucking connection between Palin and Giffords killing. And lets not fuck about here…in the feted mind of the Democrat they absolutely WANTED to believe with their very soul that Palin was the cause of Giffords shooting regardless of whether Loughner had no fucking idea who the fuck Palin was to begin with.
And now the ducks are coming hone to roost. Absolutely the NYT must be made to pay a price for their hatred of Palin and their deliberate attempt at tying her to the killing of Gifford.
By the essence of your comments, you might be proving that what they are doing is actually working as planned.
I’m talking specifically about the “protective cover” of the term “mistake” ( no matter how its phrased such as a F*kUp, mistake, error, misjudgment, they are stupid and so forth)
These are very well thought out acts with long and short term deliverables as well as coordination with other plans.
They also have both tactical and strategic objectives.
They are as much psychological ( to control or influence the mind of the sheeple) as much as a physical result.
The point is that everything the left does is a deliberate intentional act with specific goals in mind.
They actually want ( and revel) in us thinking they are “stupid”( or any other descriptor that can give them a degree of separation from the consequences of their actions).
When we fall for it, there’s a degree of sometimes sympathy, superior mindedness ( thinking we are smarter yet Brandon is in the WH)- that means we don’t observe and treat them as the criminals they are ( which if we met them forcefully they wouldn’t be near where we are today)
The left has weaponized our complacency against us ( they count on it)
We need to aggressively engage their every act like the Navy did to the Japanese in the Pacific.
I dont think they are stupid. I think they are deranged and absolutely hate anyone not Democrat.
And you are right, they do all of the things they do deliberately. They are determined to non-person anyone who disagrees with them by labelling then as nazis or racists or extremists because its ok to kill nazis, racists and extremists etc.
The right better wake the fuck up before its too fucking late!
Yeah, I pretty much concur
You’re forgetting that this happened several years after the Palin map and the Giffords shooting. Bennett was not working off the actual events but off his memory of the events, and in his memory that’s how it happened. He laid down that memory because at the time of the events his thinking was influenced by his inherent bias. So when he wrote this he couldn’t have avoided f-ing up by simply not f-ing up; the only way to avoid it would have been to check his facts before publishing, and it simply never occurred to him to do that. It came as a complete surprise to him when he learned that his memory was completely false.
Well, a couple of things on this: one, this is the NYT, they have “fact checkers” and editors editing editors to ensure that even op-eds are not riddled with factual errors; two, this is the NYT, the “gold standard,” so it’s inexcusable that he just trotted out his faulty memory without doing a quick google search–this before it even gets to an editor; three, this is a potentially harmful (to the NYT) assertion to make, so the legal side of editorial should have shut it down or ensured that it was revised extensively.
This isn’t some random blog or comment section, Milhouse, where some unknown writer just spouts crap off the top of their head with no checks in place. Writers at the NYT don’t have to do their own fact checking; heck, the editors don’t even usually fact-check there, they have actual “fact checkers” who do that bit of editing (too tedious for vaunted “editors” to bother with). Because NYT.
He was the editor! He didn’t write the article, he was editing someone else’s work, and decided it needed some “balance” so it wouldn’t look like Dems are the party of political violence (which they absolutely are!).
This was after whatever fact-checking they do (which I doubt they really do much of, despite their claims, because of all the ludicrous errors they routinely publish that any serious fact-checker would have caught. Also, I used to read the NYT regularly until about 20 years ago, and for at least a decade before that I kept noticing that they did no copy-editing, because their copy was full of typos, and occasionally it even had editing instructions in it, such as “open parens” or “new graf” or whatever, which certainly should never appear in print!)
So the question is, Who edits the editors themselves? (Qui recenseo ipsos recensitos?)
Bennet WROTE the part about Palin that is the subject of the lawsuit. Yes, he was the editorial page editor, but guess what, editors do stuff like edit pieces. In this case, Bennet actually wrote a whole paragraph, the one about Palin that is in question, and this new content should have been reviewed by editors, fact-checkers, and legal. But it clearly wasn’t.
As an aside, adding whole paragraphs to an author’s work is not something we do here at LI. I, personally, think that is taking editing into a whole new realm that is beyond its scope and purpose. I would be horrified if anyone added whole paragraphs to my posts, and I certainly wouldn’t do that to another writer. I mean, really, can you imagine?!
Well, apparently at large newspapers, or at least at the NYT, editors do feel free to add paragraphs, cut paragraphs, and generally mess around with their underlings’ copy. And since they are the editors, they don’t send their edits back to the end of the queue so it can go through the alleged “fact-checking” and copy-editing again. I guess the idea is that the editor is the one responsible, and can be trusted not to f up. Which Bennett failed miserably at. He thought he remembered this incident with Palin so he stuck it in, and was shocked when he found that he’d imagined the whole thing.
also known as gross negligence at best and malice at worst
– which is the heart of the libel case
– against a PUBLIC FIGURE
the best the Times can do is pay her off
– he is falling on his sword for the Times
– pay her once instead of opening up the floodgates
– she might appeal even if she wins
– just to overturn the precedent for malice against a public figure
My understanding is that she’s already refused a settlement for exactly this reason.
They have HUGE exposure here.
If Sarah Palin wins this case, even if damages are minimal, she will undoubtedly run for Senate in the all-party primary this year.
While we all should be grateful to her for the lawsuit on the NYtimes we shouldn’t forget that this is actually Sarah Palin.
War on terror do you remember that?
Remember Iraq?
Remember the drone strikes?
Remember the torture defenses like water boarding is terrorists baptism?
On a personal level she seems like a very good person, like the kind of person everyone would like.
But we aren’t electing a best friend, why should the people of Alaska want to return to the neocon era?
Yes, I remember the war on (Islamist) terror. We’re still in it; the terrorists are still at war with us, but we seem to have forgotten that we also have to fight.
We severely punished Japanese servicemen for use of torture on American troops so clearly being a torture shill is not our values, Sadaam Hussein was not an Islamist he was an enemy of the Islamists and of Iran’s theocracy, and the best way for them not to attack us is to just refuse entry to Afghans.
France has police officers deal with terrorism and it seems to work there just fine.
“War on terror do you remember that?
Remember Iraq?
Remember the drone strikes?
Remember the torture defenses like water boarding is terrorists baptism?”
Perhaps the marxist would care to show us where Palin ever had the responsibility for any of those four points?
I’ll save you the struggle, you can’t. You just make shit up like every other leftist.
So an extremely prominent neocon from the 2000s who defended all of the above, advocated for a more extreme version of all of the above (i.e. when she advocated we ignore all international law and kidnap Julian Assange from a legally recognized embassy) and was a torture shill who actively supported the construction of the very national security state out for all of us is your idea of someone to support against other Republicans?
Looks like next time you call Liz Cheney (who wasn’t in any office at the time) a war pig like Gaetz did and like I do all the time you don’t mean it
No, extreme political rhetoric isn’t as prevalent in America on the left as on the right, it’s far more prevalent.
You have to parse the claim through leftist ears.
Their violence is speech, so saying they have violent rhetoric is just saying they have speechy speech.
Our speech is violence so saying we have violent rhetoric is just saying we have violent violence.
Obviously we have way more violence on our side.
What is SP wearing? Unfortunately it’s a turnoff when 57 year old women try to look 25.
That is not dressing for the jury, a bit more conservative in clothing choices should be in place, or is this a stock photo ?
As a woman I don’t like seeing older women do this, reminds me of Dr Biden and her black textured stockings with her Minnie dress, yuck
I’m not saying dress frumpy by any means but SP I s showing the breasts… double yuck
We will respectfully have to agree to disagree on that point.
I’m a man, but if I look good enough at 57 to dress like that, I will..
Not in court
troll
gonzotx is not a troll. Palin should choose conservative dress for courtroom appearances.
If she wants to ride a ‘snowmachine’ buck naked wearing a solid silver Valkyrie helm with one hand on the throttle while waving a horn-stein of Finnish sima mead in the other hand, I’m all for it!
Heh! I did a double-take on that photo, too. I think it’s the ill-fitting fuchsia jacket that seems a bit inappropriate for court. She’s always worn tanks or camis under jackets, so that part doesn’t bother me, nor do I think she is showing her breasts, though a higher cut top with that crazy-tight blazer would maybe help the look a little.
All that said, Sarah is a gorgeous woman and can wear whatever she wants. We might prefer to see her dressed as she did while running for VP, but I’m pretty sure we are a party of two. 🙂
You can clearly see her breasts
Not good enough though
Lol
But ITS COURT!!!!
I can’t believe you two are getting hysterical over a little high cleavage, but that fuchsia jacket is absolutely appalling. Looks like she borrowed it from her granddaughter.
Let her take it off too.
I have no objections
Bwahaha, txvet2! I don’t care about her cleavage; I think she looks great. Well, she would if it weren’t for that ill-fitting fuchsia jacket. 😉
I see someone was moderating
Guess you need to again
I’m still in awe of all these urinalysts who have never pulled a trigger in their lives, yet can still pontificate on what represents a “gunsight” and what doesn’t.
It’s not easy being a calumnist for an outlet like the NYT. You constantly need to up your game.