A jury has begun deliberations in the case brought by former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska against The New York Times after her lawyers urged the jurors to find the publication liable for defamation.
Kenneth G. Turkel, a lawyer for Ms. Palin, said that James Bennet, the Times’s opinion editor at the time who had rewritten an editorial at the center of the case, had acted with complete disregard for the truth and for Ms. Palin.
“She’s just a casualty of their theories, their narrative,” Mr. Turkel told the jury in his closing statement.
This is the second time the case has been heard by a jury. Ms. Palin sued The Times and Mr. Bennet in 2017, and a federal judge and the jury ruled against Ms. Palin in the first trial in 2022. But an appeals court overturned that decision, saying the judge had made several errors that had tainted the trial, and ordered a new trial.
The new trial, which began last week, has heard evidence from Ms. Palin and Mr. Bennet, as well as other editors and writers involved in the 2017 editorial. The editorial was published after a gunman opened fire on lawmakers at a baseball practice. The editorial had initially made an incorrect link between a map distributed by Ms. Palin’s political action committee and a 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that severely injured Representative Gabby Giffords.
Mr. Bennet had rewritten a draft of the editorial under deadline pressure, he told the jury, and made a mistake by adding the statement, which he said he had not meant to be read as though the map directly led the gunman to act, nor that Ms. Palin was to blame.
The Times issued a correction about 14 hours after publication and posted an apology on social media.
But Ms. Palin and her lawyers said that the false statement “tied her name” to a mass murder. Mr. Turkel said The Times’s correction was insufficient because it did not name Ms. Palin or her political action committee.
“The only way they can be held accountable is by a verdict in this case,” he said.
Felicia Ellsworth, a lawyer for The Times and Mr. Bennet, told the jury that to meet the bar to prove a public figure was defamed, they must determine that not only did The Times make a mistake but also that Mr. Bennet and the publication did not care about the truth when they drafted and revised the editorial.
“She needs to prove that it’s more than just an honest mistake,” Ms. Ellsworth said. “And she can’t.”
Ms. Ellsworth added that Ms. Palin was not seeking any financial damages and had provided no evidence to support that her reputation had been damaged, including during a run for a seat in the House, in which she lost her race but drew crowds.
“Taking on the traditional media made her popular in 2008 when she ran for vice president; it made her popular in 2022 when she ran for Congress,” Ms. Ellsworth said. “And she’s hoping it will do the same today.”
Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email: [email protected]
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