Sarah Palin’s libel trial against the New York Times begins | Media News

The Republican former United States vice-presidential candidate is fighting ‘an uphill battle’, her lawyer told the jurors in a New York courtroom on Thursday.

A lawyer for Sarah Palin told jurors on Thursday that the former Republican United States vice-presidential candidate and Alaska governor is fighting “an uphill battle” as the trial got under way in her defamation lawsuit against the New York Times in a case that could test long-standing protections for US news media.

In his opening statement to the jury, Palin’s lawyer Shane Vogt said his client plans to demonstrate the newspaper’s “history of bias” towards her and other Republicans.

Palin, 57, sued the Times in 2017 over an editorial that incorrectly linked her political rhetoric to a 2011 Arizona mass shooting that left six dead and US Representative Gabby Giffords seriously wounded.

The disputed wording had been added by former editorial page editor James Bennet, who is also a defendant. The Times quickly corrected the editorial.

“What am I trying to accomplish? Justice, for people who expect the truth in the media,” Palin told reporters as she entered the Manhattan federal courthouse.

The trial comes after two US Supreme Court justices and some legal scholars recommended revisiting the high court’s landmark 1964 decision in New York Times vs Sullivan that made it difficult for public officials to prove defamation.

Palin has signalled she would challenge that precedent on appeal if she lost.

“We’re keenly aware of the fact that we’re fighting an uphill battle,” Vogt told jurors.

“We are not here trying to win your votes for Governor Palin or any of her policies,” but instead to find the Times liable for a “particularly horrific and debunked” editorial, Vogt said.

Headlined “America’s Lethal Politics”, the disputed June 14, 2017, editorial was published after a shooting in Alexandria, Virginia in which Steve Scalise, a member of the House of Representatives’ Republican leadership, was wounded.

The editorial questioned whether the shooting reflected how vicious US politics had become.

It then said “the link to political incitement was clear” when a man named Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in the 2011 shooting after Palin’s fundraising political action committee had circulated a map putting Gifford and 19 other Democrats under “stylized cross hairs”.

Bennet had added that language to a draft prepared by a Times colleague, and has said he did not intend to blame Palin.

Vogt portrayed Bennet as a “highly educated career journalist” who knew the words he added were false, yet did not change them.

Sarah Palin, 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate and former Alaska governor, sits in court for the trial in her defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, at the United States Courthouse in the Manhattan borough of New York City [Jane Rosenberg/Reuters]

“He had his narrative, and he stuck to it,” Vogt said.

The Times has said its quick correction removing what Bennet added reflected its lack of actual malice.

The opening of the trial was delayed from January 24 because Palin tested positive for the coronavirus. Palin has publicly said she will not get the COVID-19 vaccine.

To win, Palin must offer clear and convincing evidence that the Times acted with “actual malice”, meaning it knew the editorial was false or had reckless disregard for the truth.

She is seeking unspecified damages, saying the editorial harmed her reputation. The Times has not suffered a loss in a defamation case in more than half a century.

The Supreme Court justices who called for reconsidering the Sullivan precedent are the conservatives Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

Thomas has said little historical evidence suggested that the actual malice standard flowed from the original meaning of the US Constitution’s First and 14th Amendments.

Gorsuch has said the standard offered an “ironclad subsidy for the publication of falsehoods” in a landscape increasingly populated by media that can disseminate sensational information with little regard for the truth.