MANHATTAN (CN) — Former New York Times opinions editor James Bennet shed tears on the witness stand Thursday as he recalled learning that a 2017 editorial on American gun violence that he rewrote for the paper of record had erroneously linked onetime Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin to a mass shooting six years earlier.
“My responsibility to the readers, to my colleagues, to The New York Times, was to ensure that we were clear,” Bennet, who no longer works at the Times, testified in New York federal court. “I feel that I blew it. I made a mistake.”
Palin, the former Alaska governor, sued the Times and the former editor in 2017 over an editorial titled “America’s Lethal Politics.” She claims the piece defamed her by falsely linking her campaign’s rhetoric to the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six and wounded a dozen, including congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
Bennet, the editorial page editor at The New York Times from May 2016 until his forced resignation in June 2020, testified he intended for the editorial — responding to a shooting that morning at a congressional baseball practice — to address how the “rhetoric of demonization” in American politics, “along with the availability of guns,” could potentially contribute to acts of violence like the mass shootings the piece references.
“The overall environment was getting overheated,” he said.
He testified shortly after the piece was published, he got an email from conservative Times columnist Ross Douthat expressing concerns about Palin’s heated political rhetoric, the Tea Party and other right-wing causes being linked to the Giffords shooting.
“I felt terrible when I got that email from Ross. Immediately I just felt awful,” Bennet testified.
“I thought I worked with what Elizabeth had delivered to make a clear and stronger argument, and I made it less clear,” he said, referring to Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson who wrote the first draft of the editorial that Bennet had edited and rewritten.
Bennet testified his use of political “incitement” in his edit, meaning “to foment a spirt of anger and enmity,” was informed by his previous reporting on the Israel-Palestine conflict for the Times as Jerusalem bureau chief.
Although the Times quickly issued a correction declaring that “no such link was established,” Palin argues in her libel case that the Times’ revision and correction note were insufficient because they did not mention Palin by name in the correction or ever publicly apologize to her.
Bennet responded that he was “troubled” by the accusation that he never apologized to Palin, countering that he had attempted to issue a timely apology to Palin in 2017 through a statement given at the time to CNN reporter Oliver Darcy. “I never retracted that apology,” he said. “I did, and do, apologize to Governor Palin for this mistake.”
Bennet explained his understanding of a “longstanding policy” at The New York Times not to apologize for corrections. “If you apologize over and over, it begins to seem meaningless and rote,” he said.
Palin’s attorney Shane Vogt questioned where this policy to not apologize was in The New York Times’ Manual of Style and Usage.
Vogt asked Bennet if he recalled editing blog articles about the Giffords shooting when it occurred, during his tenure as editor-in-chief of The Atlantic from 2006-2016.
Quoting directly from an article on the shooting published by The Atlantic’s Daily Dish, Vogt asked Bennet if he remembered editing the relevant line: “My first impulse in any assassination of a political leader is to ask about possible political motivation, as well as the possibility of none. But my first personal judgment of any link between Loughner and the Tea Party is to debunk it.”
“I may have, sure, it’s possible,” Bennet replied.
Bennet resigned from the Times in June 2020 after the newspaper disowned an opinion piece by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton that advocated using federal troops to quell unrest in the wake of Minneapolis police killing George Floyd. It was later revealed he hadn’t read the piece before publication.
During opening arguments on Tuesday, the Times admitted it made an error in “America’s Lethal Politics,” but its attorney Felicia Ellsworth told jurors that the newspaper “corrected the record as loudly, clearly and quickly as possible.”
Palin’s civil trial in the Southern District of New York, seeking damages for reputational harm, is a stress test of long-established legal protections that protect American media against defamation claims by public figures.
In New York Times v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that the First Amendment protects statements about public figures, including false ones, unless officials can prove actual malice.
Last month, the Supreme Court declined to review a challenge by Trump megadonor and casino mogul Steve Wynn that aimed to overturn the core ruling on press freedom.
Wynn, a billionaire who oversaw the construction and operation of iconic Las Vegas casinos including The Mirage, Treasure Island and the Bellagio, petitioned the high court in an effort to lower the standard needed for public figures to sue over media reports.
Palin’s libel retrial is expected to hear closing summations on Wednesday, April 23rd.