One clear takeaway to emerge from the trial in Sarah Palin’s ongoing libel suit against The New York Times is that running the paper’s opinion section is akin to walking through an ideological and political minefield.
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 ina 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. “It was important to me that the editorial board reestablished or, you know, have a reputation for being able to call balls and strikes without regard to partisanship.”
Such efforts to be evenhanded are often pilloried on the left as “both sides” journalism, and Bennet suggested on Wednesday that the perceived errors crept into the editorial as he was trying to avoid such a charge while rewriting the editorial in dispute, which was prompted by a shooting rampage at a Republican congressional baseball practice on June 14, 2017.
That morning, a mentally disturbed supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) opened fire on the GOP members as they practiced in Alexandria, Va., a few miles from the Capitol. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who is now the House minority whip, was gravely wounded in the attack, other lawmakers were forced to dive for cover and three people other than Scalise were injured.
Bennet indicated that the event struck him as a good occasion for the left-leaning Times editorial board to warn liberals about the dangers of overheated political rhetoric.
“There’s a fair amount of hypocrisy in our political culture,” Bennet explained to jurors. “It’s easier to see when the other side is doing something you don’t like than to see when you’re making the same mistake.”
So, the editor dispatched a colleague to try to find examples of figures on the left using violent or incendiary imagery. The D.C.-based writer, Elizabeth Williamson, came back with nothing notable from Democratic politicians. However, at Bennet’s urging, she did mention in a first draft of the editorial the controversy over a map released by Palin’s PAC in 2010 that appeared to put rifle sights over the districts of Democratic House members the group was targeting for defeat.
“I was very mindful that we didn’t have the example [on the left] that I asked to see, which I saw as a weakness in our argument. I was worried about that,” Bennet said during about three hours of testimony on Wednesday. “We were asserting that it was right to condemn the left for such incitement, but we didn’t have an example of such incitement.”
On the stand a day earlier, Bennet waffled on whether the editorial would have made sense without the reference to the Palin PAC. He initially said the piece “fell apart,” but later said it would have been a weaker but still coherent argument.
Bennet echoed that latter position on Wednesday.
“I feel that the overall argument of the piece was still valid,” he said. “As important as this correction was, I don’t think it, as I say, invalidated that overall argument.”
However, Bennet said that in retrospect, trying to compare the impact of the Palin map on the Arizona shooting to the role of political rhetoric in the Virginia rampage was unwise.
“I wound up making a distinction that, you know, was not worth making,” he said. “I have regretted this pretty much every day since.”
Bennet said the mention of the Palin PAC’s map was supposed to indicate that there was better evidence of extreme rhetoric on the right than the left, but not that there was any proof that the Tucson shooting — which killed six and badly wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) — was tied directly to the map.
“What was in my mind was that that map was a connection between the events of that day, the victims on the field and this larger atmosphere of incitement,” Bennet said. “If I thought it caused … the violence, I would have used the word ‘cause.’ It would have saved me a couple words.”
Bennet said his thinking on the issue of incitement was influenced by his time as a Times foreign correspondent, based in Jerusalem and covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The former editor said he also thought back toa column that Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote in 2016 about how then-candidate Donald Trump’s vague suggestions to gun-rights supporters to go after his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, risked spurring violence from the mentally unbalanced.
Bennet said his own argument was intended to be about the “atmosphere” created by fiery political rhetoric, not whether a causal connection could be or had been established between that sort of communication and specific acts of violence, like the shooting that Jared Loughner carried out in Tucson in 2011.
“I wouldn’t think then — and don’t think now — that the map caused Jared Loughner to act,” Bennet said, under questioning from Times attorney David Axelrod. “I didn’t think we were saying that, and therefore the question wouldn’t have entered my mind to research that question.”
In addition to the ideological and political shoals Bennet was trying to avoid, he said, on the night the editorial was published he was up against the clock with final copy due for the first print edition around 8 p.m.
“I was very conscious of the deadline,” the former editor said. “I should have slowed down.”
Bennet also conceded that he had a reputation for emerging from other meetings late in the afternoon and tinkering with editorials.
“It drove my colleagues a little bit crazy, you know, to then get very immersed in the editorial process at this time,” he said.
Bennet said that because he didn’t see the editorial as claiming a causal link, he was stunned when criticism of the editorial broke out on Twitter that night and even began to flow in from people like Times columnist Ross Douthat. The former editor said he was so disturbed that he could not sleep.
“I tried to get a little sleep, but I don’t think I was really able to sleep,” Bennet said. “I was upset and confused, I really have to say, because I just was so, I just was so blindsided by this.”
At times during Wednesday’s testimony, Bennet suggested the editorial amounted to a statement of opinion about the impact of overheated rhetoric on political violence. He noted, for example, that the piece said there was “probably” such a link. If the editorial is deemed to consist entirely of opinion, there could be no libel claim over it since opinions cannot be libelous.
However, Palin attorney Shane Vogt later hammered away in front of the jury at the Times’ choice to run corrections. In those updates and in statements to media reporters, Bennet and the paper bluntly conceded they got their facts wrong, he noted.
While Bennet survived the controversy over the 2017 editorial, he became a casualty of the job’s political minefield in 2020 after the Times published an op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) advocating the use of National Guard troops to quell violence stemming from widespread racial justice protests triggered by the killing of motorist George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Many Times readers and a substantial portion of the newspaper’s editorial staff reacted with fury to the Cotton op-ed, which they argued amounted to violence against largely Black protesters.
Bennet resigned under pressure over the episode, which has not been mentioned in front of the jury.
Palin, who has been present at the trial throughout, took the stand briefly on Wednesday afternoon before the jury was dismissed for the day. Palin lawyer Ken Turkel had her provide details about her family and her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, as well as her career.
“You were the youngest governor in the history of Alaska?” Turkel asked.
“And the first woman,” replied Palin, whose lawyers signaled openly early in the trial they faced an uphill battle representing a conservative Republican politician in a New York courtroom.
Palin said she ran for governor to fight corruption involving oil companies and Alaska’s vast reserves of oil and gas. She also detailed her dizzying initiation into national politics when she was selected as former Sen. John McCain’s running mate on the 2008 GOP presidential ticket.
“I was thrust into a different kind of spotlight … into a campaign that, candidly, they didn’t kind of understand a whole lot of the connectivity with the people in local government that I would be able to provide. They had big-picture, national politics on their minds all the time, appropriately,” she said. “I don’t think they were prepared for me, necessarily, because I was new to the national stage, but it was — it was an amazing experience.”
If jurors are inclined to award damages to Palin, 57, they’ll have to gauge the impact of the editorial on her reputation. Her employment prospects, then and now, could be a key factor. Palin, who has had gigs on reality television and published a book since her unsuccessful bid for the White House with McCain, gave a diffuse answer when asked about what she currently does on a daily basis.
“Holding down the fort in Wasilla, Alaska. It’s not easy conditions living up there, but I’m used to it and I don’t complain about it, but, single mom now and my youngest child has special needs,” Palin said. “So, my life revolves around him … and his schooling and his therapies, but also trying to help other candidates and traveling around the country, still being involved in certain issues and certain campaigns.”
Palin said part of her role was telling political candidates “what they’re in for, if they’re newbies, especially.”
The trial in the case, originally scheduled for last month, was delayed about a week and a half after Palin tested positive for Covid. The former vice presidential hopeful is expected to resume her testimony on Thursday morning.
