**Written by Doug Powers
OUT as the New York Times slogan: “The truth is more important now than ever.”
The New York Times has prevailed in defense of a defamation lawsuit brought by Sarah Palin over an editorial that mistakenly linked one of her political action committee ads to a 2011 mass shooting that severely wounded then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff dismissed the complaint on Tuesday.
“Nowhere is political journalism so free, so robust, or perhaps so rowdy as in the United States,” writes the judge in an opinion. “In the exercise of that freedom, mistakes will be made, some of which will be hurtful to others.
Responsible journals will promptly correct their errors; others will not. But if political journalism is to achieve its constitutionally endorsed role of challenging the powerful, legal redress by a public figure must be limited to those cases where the public figure has a plausible factual basis for complaining that the mistake was made maliciously, that is, with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard of its falsity.”
The liberal media have made the same “mistake” repeatedly, so in believing the NYT’s “oops” excuse, this judge has updated Ian Fleming’s famous quote to “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action another coincidence.”
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
