Sarah Palin’s Lawsuit Against the New York Times Could Expose their Den of Lies

Sarah Palin was never a shrinking violet. She did not shrink in the face of a libelous op-ed piece in the New York Times.

Back in June 2017, the Times published a piece defaming her. In a scurrilous editorial, the Times linked Palin’s PAC to the 2011 mass shooting in Arizona that left six people dead of then-U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords wounded.

The editorial claimed “the link to political incitement was clear and that the shooting occurred after Palin’s PAC circulated a map putting 20 Democrats “including Giffords” under stylized cross hairs.”

When Palin raised a stink about the wording of the piece, the Times back pedaled and corrected the editorial. They disclaimed any connection between political rhetoric and the Arizona shooting and the editor said he did not blame Palin. Yes, sometimes publishing deadlines cause those pesky factual errors.

Curiously, the retraction came in the wake of Republican U.S. Representative Steve Scalise’s shooting during a congressional baseball game.

Palin is suing the New York Times for libel and, according to court records, seeks compensation of over $420,000 for damage to her reputation. What she has to prove is that there was either malice or gross negligence in the report, not simply a matter of opinion.

The consensus is that Sarah Palin won’t win the suit, because of the heavy burden of proof in proving libel. Nevertheless, the trial could be embarrassing for the Times, an organization that has suffered hits in its reputation because of one-sided liberal editorial policies and its frequent lying deviance from its promise to report “all the news that’s fit to print.”

Watch Dinesh D’Souza’s take on this issue.