Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Not enough new Joe Rogan vs. Spotify news for you? You might want to tune in to the Sarah Palin vs. New York Times trial, which is underway this week in New York and is offering up all kinds of interesting tidbits — about the weirdness of newspapers, about Twitter vs. print apologies, about how big organizations try to do damage control, and about how people really hate losing their personal offices. Read on!
First, a quick recap from CNN’s Oliver Darcy:
Palin sued the paper in 2017 over an editorial that incorrectly linked the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords to a map circulated by Palin’s PAC that showed certain electoral districts under crosshairs. The Times corrected the error and apologized for it, and a judge initially dismissed the case. But a federal appeals court revived it and, as a result, a trial will now take place.
The case is, at its heart, about the limits of First Amendment protections and the standard set in the landmark New York Times vs. Sullivan case. Specifically, the standard that a public figure must prove an outlet operated with “actual malice” when it published defamatory information. Palin has argued The Times did, and The Times has said it made an honest error.
And a reminder on the kind of piece this was, from Slate:
It was an unsigned editorial. These appear in the Times opinion section, opposite the page where bylined opinion columns run. They are composed by a small group of Times opinion journalists known as the editorial board, and are meant to somehow represent the institutional voice of the Times. They are, in general, topical but milquetoast center-left takes.
Listening to Palin v. NYT again. Here's the original Editorial Board piece as it appeared in the June 15, 2017, paper that is at the center of the defamation trial: pic.twitter.com/vXZ5jXlzZo
— Sara B. (@sara_bee) February 9, 2022
The editorial, which lamented the nation’s increasingly heated political discourse, was written after the shooting at a congressional baseball team practice in June 2017 that left Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, gravely wounded. As [then-Opinion editor James Bennet] was editing the piece before publication, he inserted an incorrect reference to a 2010 map from Ms. Palin’s political action committee that included illustrations of cross hairs over 20 House districts held by Democrats.
That addition — “the link to political incitement was clear” — asserted that there was a link between the map and the 2011 shooting that critically injured another member of Congress, Gabrielle Giffords, and killed six others in Tucson, Ariz. In fact, such a link was never established.
Bennet resigned from The New York Times in 2020 following the publication of an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that argued that the United States government should call in the military to quash Black Lives Matter protests. He testified in court on Tuesday and was back Wednesday.
His testimony and corresponding legal documents have provided a peek into some of the inner workings of the case. A few themes emerge.
Many of the reporters covering this trial aren’t physically in court, but are calling in from their homes. You can do this, too. It certainly makes live-tweeting the trial easier.
If you’ve ever done any editing, or been edited, you should tune into the Palin v NYT trial now, as James Bennet tries to explain his error that spurred this lawsuit.
844-721-7237, access code 7920433
— Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) February 9, 2022
Public access to live audio feeds of federal trials is partially a pandemic-related development, and it’s unclear if it will last (legislation is pending).
I am sorry to report that many federal courts are suspending this form of access as the pandemic abates, including SDNY for criminal trials/hearings. This happens to be a civil case. Many fed courts across the South haven’t offered such access for more than a year. https://t.co/rpOIgW3sCh
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) February 9, 2022
Many of the details that emerge about how the Times Opinion section works (or, at least, how it worked in 2017) are strange to read from the outside.
Back on the Palin trial today. Judge Jed Rakoff just kicked things off and James Bennet is back on the stand. Times lawyer David Axelrod is asking Bennet about the structure of the editorialk board at the NYT.. Editorial board is basically "a writing collective"
— Sarah Ellison (@sarahellison) February 9, 2022
Elizabeth Williamson was the then-editorial writer who wrote the first draft of the Palin editorial. (She’s now a feature writer at the Times.) David Axelrod is a lawyer representing The New York Times.
That was an email to Elizabeth Williamson with guidance as to how to write the day's main editorial. Axelrod asks why he used "whether," and Bennet replied that it's an "important word" in this context.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 9, 2022
The mind-boggling component here is that Bennet, later in the day, inserted very definitive incitement language into the published editorial. Yet here he was using more careful language in an email to staffers. Wild.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 9, 2022
Note: call it intellectually consistent or self-important, or both, but many serious newspaper editorial pages handle prior positions like rulings from an appellate court – meaningful deviations from past stances would take explanation and might require time to evolve.
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) February 9, 2022
Bennet: “It was a terrible mistake. It felt terrible. And it still does.”
Bennet: "It was extremely important to me that the editorial board have a reputation for calling balls and strikes without regard to partisanship."
The error undercut that, Bennet testifies: "It was a terrible mistake. It felt terrible. And it still does."
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) February 9, 2022
Call me weird, but my favorite moment at Palin v. NYT today was Bennet explaining he spent ‘a lot of time’ in 2017 telling ed board members that due to $-saving move they were going to lose the private offices they’d had since ‘time immemorial.' The rest: https://t.co/RbOInpK6mf
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) February 9, 2022
Hanna Ingber was founding director of the New York Times Reader Center, an initiative launched in 2017 (shortly after the Times eliminated its Public Editor position) to interact more directly with readers.
Under discussion now is the email from a colleague of Bennet's in the NYT Reader Center — Hanna Ingber — with thoughts about how to present the correction. pic.twitter.com/kXu1P372xj
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 8, 2022
The edit page Twitter account publishes these corrections.
Note that neither mentions Palin. And as is NYT's (and many other news orgs') usual style, they don't apologize pic.twitter.com/pbgUsOVC4U— Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) February 8, 2022
This has not been the only discussion of tweet threads.
(As the NYT's attorney shows Bennet a Twitter thread.)
Q: Can you explain what threading the tweets like this means for the jury?
Bennet explains what threading is.
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) February 9, 2022
The Times apologized via Twitter from the @nytopinion account, but didn’t run an apology in the actual paper, just a correction. The “Darcy” here is CNN’s Oliver Darcy.
But the apology didn't reach Darcy because the New York Times has a policy against apologizing. 4/ pic.twitter.com/ikqvDgnwiO
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 7, 2022
The policy against apologizing does not seem to apply to tweets.
Does that policy apply to tweets? They tweeted an apology on June 15, 2017, which CNN included in its story. https://t.co/Hp2BoXlkLV
— An Phung (@AnHaiPhung) February 8, 2022
