The editorial was pegged to another shooting rampage in which James Hodgkinson opened fire on a group of Congress members and staff at an Alexandria baseball field on June 14. An immediate social-media backlash battered the editorial on the grounds that no link between Palin’s PAC and Loughner’s actions had ever been established. As for the map circulated by the PAC: It put congressional districts under crosshairs, not politicians themselves.
The New York Times issued corrections and an apology to readers, though not directly to Palin. She sued in a New York federal court not even two weeks after the whole affair, alleging that the newspaper “knew and had published pieces acknowledging that there was no connection between Mrs. Palin and Loughner’s 2011 shooting.”
In an appearance last week before Judge Jed S. Rakoff, New York Times Editorial Page Editor James Bennet testified that he hadn’t, in fact, reviewed key articles related to the Palin-Loughner connection before he edited a draft editorial written by Elizabeth Williamson, a Washington-based editorial board member. “I had created an ambiguity that people were reading to say something I didn’t mean to say,” Bennet said, according to the New York Post. “I did not intend to imply that it was a causal link to this crime.”
Whatever Bennet intended to do, there’s now more evidence on the record to document what he appears to have done. Have a look at the key lines in Williamson’s piece:
The edited version of the story went much, much further:
Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.
So: Williamson goofed on the crosshairs matter but otherwise produced a careful bit of writing that squared with the New York Times’s editorial position on gun control. Through the editing process, it acquired a naked allegation about Palin’s PAC, one that had been debunked years back.
Rakoff is expected to rule by month’s end on the newspaper’s motion to dismiss Palin’s suit.
