It appears CNN and the New York Times are in a race to see who can be the most prolific fake news outlet.
CNN has recently come under fire for pushing a bogus anti-Donald Trump story, leading to the termination of three journalists.
The Times also took a hit when former FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress that the paper’s Trump-Russia story that sparked a media bonanza was mostly bunk.
The Times is under scrutiny again for irresponsible journalism, and it could hit them hard in the wallet.
Sarah Palin is suing the Times for an article suggesting she inspired deranged shooter Jared Lee Loughner.
From Breitbart:
On Tuesday evening, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin hired Hulk Hogan’s lawyers and sued the New York Times for defamation for falsely accusing her in a June 14 editorial of inciting Jared Lee Loughner to shoot Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ). The Times’ editorial was published on the day that James Hodgkinson shot House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) while he was practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game with his GOP teammates.
“Today, Sarah Palin took a stand against The New York Times Company by filing a lawsuit which seeks to hold The Times accountable for stating that Governor Palin is part of a ‘sickeningly familiar pattern’ of politically motivated violence and that she incited the horrific 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords, a tragedy where the gunman seriously wounded numerous people and killed 6, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl,” Palin’s lawyers—Ken Turkel, Shane Vogt, and S. Preston Ricardo—said in a statement.
The complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court in the Southern District of New York, states that “at the time of publication, The Times knew and had published pieces acknowledging that there was no connection between Mrs. Palin and Loughner’s 2011 shooting.”
“In doing so, The Times violated the law and its own policies,” it reads.
Messrs. Turkel, Vogt, and Ricardo said Palin “seeks to hold The Times to its November 13, 2016, pledge [‘to rededicate itself to reporting facts honestly and holding power to account’], and to face both journalistic and financial accountability for the false statements that it published about Mrs. Palin.”
[…]
Here is what the Times originally wrote in its editorial:
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.
That the Times dug up a six-year-old narrative, which had been discredited, shows how the paper has struggled to manage its bias.
The article continues:
The Times, after much public backlash from even Palin’s harshest critics on the left and right, then issued two subsequent corrections.
After adding that “no connection to the shooting was ever established” to its original editorial, the Times issued this correction on June 15:
An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that a link existed between political incitement and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords. In fact, no such link was established.
But the Times never corrected that it had falsely stated that Palin had put “Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs” when Palin did no such thing.
Later in the day on June 15, the Times edited its editorial again to note that Palin’s map “showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.”
It then issued its second correction:
The editorial also incorrectly described a map distributed by a political action committee before that shooting. It depicted electoral districts, not individual Democratic lawmakers, beneath stylized cross hairs.
Yet, in a statement to CNN, the Times insisted that their errors did not “undercut or weaken the argument of the piece.”
[…]
To prove that the Times had “ample facts available that established that there was no connection between Mrs. Palin and Loughner’s crime,” the lawyers point to an article the Times published on January 15, 2011, that “recognized that no direct or clear link between political rhetoric and Loughner’s actions could be claimed.” In addition, the lawyers point out that New York Times columnist Charles Blow once wrote that “the only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting” of Giffords.
[…]
Palin’s attorneys argue that the Times’ “conduct was committed knowingly, intentionally, willfully, wantonly and maliciously, with the intent to harm Mrs. Palin, or in blatant disregard of the substantial likelihood of causing her harm, thereby entitling Mrs. Palin to an award of punitive damages.”
Two of Palin’s lawyers–Messrs. Turkel and Vogt–successfully represented Hulk Hogan in his $140 million invasion of privacy suit against Gawker after Gawker published Hogan’s sex tape. As noted on the firm’s website, they “convinced a Pinellas County jury to award Terry Bollea, professionally known as Hulk Hogan, $55 million in economic damages and another $60 million in damages for emotional distress. The jury awarded an additional $25.1 million in punitive damages, making the verdict one of the largest contested verdicts in Pinellas County history.”
To compound the matter for the Times, the political ideology of Loughner was muddled at best, and progressive at worst (for the left). There’s also no evidence he even saw the campaign map in question.
It appears Palin has a good case. The paper very clearly acted irresponsibly by linking Palin to the shooting.