A retrial of Sarah Palin's case against 'New York Times' begins Monday

Source: NPR

April 13, 2025 5:02 AM ET


As another New York City institution once said, it's deja vu all over again for The New York Times and former Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin. Palin has the rare opportunity to retry her defamation case against the Times even though she lost it twice in a 24-hour period in early 2022. Jury selection is slated to begin Monday in federal court in Manhattan, after a judge's misstep in the initial suit opened the door to a retrial.

The case was sparked by a 2017 Times editorial that, Palin's attorneys argued, had accused her of inciting murder six years earlier in the shooting in Tucson, Ariz. that killed six people and gravely wounded then-Rep. Gabby Giffords. No proof was ever found suggesting the shooter was motivated by, or even knew about, the Palin ad cited by the editorial.

Conservative allies had hoped to use the case to upend protections for the press stemming from a six-decades-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a defamation case that also involved the Times. Thanks to that ruling, Palin had an uphill battle: the bar to prove defamation is high for public figures such as Palin — a former governor, vice presidential candidate and vocal supporter of President Trump. She has not been able to make a credible case that she suffered tangible damages as a result of the Times' editorial, and the newspaper moved relatively quickly to remedy its errors.

But the media landscape has shifted since that first trial. CNN recently settled a case filed by a former security contractor whom it had accused of "black market" rescue operations after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. A Florida jury had awarded the man $5 million in pain and suffering; CNN agreed to pay him more to stave off the jury's decision on how much to award him in punitive damages. MSNBC settled a defamation claim brought by a physician falsely accused in 2020 of performing mass hysterectomies on female detainees at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/13/nx-s1-5361405/sarah-palin-nytimes-defamation-retrial