Testifying in Palin libel trial, former Times editorial page editor takes responsibility for errors.
The editor who oversaw publication of the 2017 editorial at the heart of Sarah Palin’s libel suit against The New York Times said on Tuesday that he ultimately bore responsibility for its errors, capping his first day of testimony in the trial that will determine whether The Times is held liable for defamation in the United States for the first time in at least 50 years.
“This is my fault. And I’m not looking to shift blame to anyone else,” James Bennet, the former editorial page editor for The Times, said under questioning from one of Ms. Palin’s lawyers.
The former Alaska governor’s legal team tried for most of the day to convince the jury that Mr. Bennet and other Times journalists acted hastily and recklessly in publishing the editorial, which falsely linked Ms. Palin’s political rhetoric to a mass shooting. They are also trying to establish that The Times was slow in appending a correction, which did not name her or offer an apology to Ms. Palin.
They focused on emails between Mr. Bennet and other members of the Times opinion staff to establish a timeline between the publication of the editorial on the night of June 14, 2017, and the addition of the correction the next morning.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/business/media/sarah-palin-new-york-times.html
They posted a correction of the editorial the following business day. That seems reasonable considering the journalists would need to verify the disputed information.
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