Palin Verdict Gives NYT Some Good News in Tumultuous Media Landscape

The embattled news media industry received a dash of good news on April 22 when a jury found that the New York Times didn’t libel former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in a much-followed case.

Palin, 61, who was Republican Sen. John McCain’s running mate in 2008, sued the Times and its former editorial page editor, James Bennet, over a June 14, 2017, article that wrongly suggested she may have incited a mass shooing in a Tucson, Ariz., parking lot in January 2011 where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was gravely wounded and five other people lost their lives.

Prior to the deadly shooting, Palin’s political action committee had created a drawing with crosshairs from a rifle scope over a number of Democratic congressional districts, including the Arizona district that Giffords represented. But there was no evidence that the gunman had actually seen the drawing.

The Times quickly corrected the error and apologized the next day.

When Bennet took the stand, he admitted he made a mistake. “My responsibility to the readers, to my colleagues, to the New York Times, was to ensure that we were clear,” said Bennet. “I feel that I blew it. I made a mistake.”

A judge and a separate jury had come to the same not-guilty conclusion about Palin’s original charge in 2022. A public figure has to show not only a factual error, but actual malice to win a libel/defamation case. Palin lost in the original go-round, but her lawsuit was re-opened by an appeals court.

Reaffirming

New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said afterward that the ruling “reaffirms an important tenet of American law: Publishers are not liable for honest mistakes.”

This decision comes at a time when even some of the largest US media companies find themselves under pressure to re-establish their credibility in extraordinary times.

It can be said that the media never have it easy in the public’s eyes. Journalists often find that they are not trusted or believed. People tend to think that reporters only try to find the bad in any situation.

Further, the advent of gossip and entertainment have blurred what has traditionally been regarded as serious news.

The current climate is especially challenging for journalists. Politicians have often portrayed the media as enemies of the state. It is rough stuff.

Media Crisis

The media have been their worst enemies at times, too. They have experienced disconcerting moments when their reputations were called into question. Journalists know that their reputations are the most important quality in their profession.

The public often accuses media organizations of having biases that affect their news coverage. When people believe that journalists are guilty of more than honest errors, they are in danger of losing their reputations.

On April 22, meanwhile, the New York Times reported that CBS News “entered a new period of turmoil,” when Bill Owens, the respected executive producer of the television newsmagazine 60 Minutes, said he would resign from the program. He referred to concerns about deteriorating journalistic independence. Making Owens’s announcement even more telling, Owens happens to be only the third executive producer in the program’s long history.

The New York Times’s news story called Owens’s decision an “extraordinary declaration.”

The 57-year-old Owens said that “it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.”

“So, having defended this show—and what we stand for—from every angle, over time, with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he wrote in a memo to his staff, which was published in the Times.

Owens’s exit comes at a precarious time for 60 Minutes. President Trump has sued CBS for $10 billion and claimed that the program committed “unlawful and illegal behavior,” and names the corporate ownership at Paramount, the parent company of CBS News.

What can the media companies do to restore their reputations?

These kinds of victories are not won overnight. The media’s high-water mark occurred when the Washington Post published stories showing that President Nixon’s administration was rife with corruption. Since the Washington Post helped drive Nixon from the White House, journalists have hoped to find another story of that magnitude.

But for now, journalists must do it the hard way, putting one foot in front of the other and performing the thankless, painstaking work of the media at its best.

Jon Friedman wrote the “Media Web” column for MarketWatch.com for more than a decade.