Inside the Courtroom Grilling of Exiled NYT Editor James Bennet

James Bennet, the ex-New York Times editor playing defense in a high-stakes defamation lawsuit brought by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, took the stand on Tuesday in a case with implications that go well beyond his own battered reputation.

Among the revelations Tuesday: Bennet apologized to the Times board of directors after the story that inspired the case was published.

Bennet, who left the Times in June 2020 amid internal backlash to another column, is accused of writing some of the infamous 2017 piece, entitled “America’s Lethal Politics.” The column erroneously linked the former Alaska governor’s political action committee and its rhetoric to the 2011 Arizona mass shooting that resulted in the death of six people and severely injured then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

The lawsuit notes that the editorial incorrectly claimed there was a “clear” link of “political incitement” between a 2010 map published by Palin’s PAC and the Arizona shooter. The article also originally and misleadingly stated that the map targeted individual lawmakers with crosshairs, whereas in fact it targeted their congressional districts.

Within seconds of sitting down at the witness stand fitted with plexiglass, Bennet was being grilled about the dictionary definition of a key word at the center of the case—and his fancy upbringing.

Palin’s attorney, Shane Vogt, asked the former editor if he would be surprised if Times readers interpreted the word “incitement” as used in the editorial by its standard definition.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Bennet replied while Palin—sporting a leather jacket and black pants—listened intently from her lawyer’s table.

The piece in question, signed by the newspaper’s editorial board, was published on June 14, 2017, just hours after Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise was wounded when a man opened fire on a congressional baseball practice in Washington. The shooter was later identified as a vehement supporter of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

No link was ever found between Palin’s map and Jared Lee Loughner, the Arizona shooter who had mental illness and a long-running fixation on Giffords. The Times, its lawyer David Axelrod has noted at trial, soon issued a correction, admitting it “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting” and “incorrectly described” the map.

Jurors have been tasked with deciding whether Bennet and the Times acted with “actual malice” when they used the disputed wording in the editorial—meaning that the former editor knew what he had written in the piece was false—or that he published the piece with “reckless disregard” for the truth. As the first libel case against the Times to go to trial in almost two decades, advocates and experts have expressed concern about its implications for First Amendment press freedom in the era of Donald Trump-style threats to the media.

Palin’s lawyers say Times editorial staff actively chose not to fact check the column’s claims and intentionally fed a narrative they knew to be false about the Republican. The piece, Palin attorney Vogt has argued, resulted in damage to the reputation of the onetime Republican vice-presidential nominee and political commentator.

Vogt, however, admitted during opening statements on Thursday that the trial represented something of a long-shot, since Palin is a prominent public figure, and therefore faces a higher burden of proof than any regular citizen accusing a publication of defamation.

“We come to this case with our eyes wide open and keenly aware of the fact we’re fighting an uphill battle,” Vogt said. “Give us a fair shot. We’re not here trying to win your votes for Governor Palin or any of her policies.”

Axelrod, the lawyer for the Times, noted to jurors during opening arguments that the piece was largely focused on gun laws—not Palin—and that the newspaper amended the two erroneous sentences and issued a correction about 12 hours after it was published. Axelrod argued that Bennet had no malice when he published the piece because he never actually meant to convey that Palin was responsible for the Arizona shooting.

“There is no doubt that the Times made a regrettable error,” Axelrod said, noting they “acted as quickly as possible to correct that mistake.”

Axelrod has argued that Palin did not suffer any harm as a result of the piece, since she has made a career out of paid speeches and TV appearances, including a stint on The Masked Singer in 2020.

But the lawsuit and Palin’s attorneys say the correction did not come close to making up for the error, which they insist was a deliberate one manufactured by Bennet.

“You would say that paragraph communicates to readers that overheated political rhetoric can create a climate that is capable of nurturing rage?” Vogt asked him of the key passage on Tuesday.

Bennet agreed, admitting that he did not personally conduct research for the editorial himself—nor did he view the map in question until after it was published.

“I was relying on [ex-editorial board member] Elizabeth [Williamson]’s description [of the map] in the piece,” Bennet, who was wearing a dark suit and striped tie, told the socially distanced eight-person jury.

Williamson, the Times reporter who was once an editorial board member, testified last week that she wrote the first draft of the piece before Bennet added the language at the crux of the lawsuit. Recounting to jurors how the editorial error was made, Williamson insisted that the piece was about “the overheated political rhetoric and the demonization of one’s opponents by both parties” and not a specific person.

Bennet took pains to blame himself for the editorial fiasco Tuesday.

“This is my fault, right? I am the ones who wrote those sentences,” Bennet said from the witness stand, while detailing the events that led up to publishing the editorial.

He explained that while he originally began drafting a note at the top of the editorial for Williamson to review, he was concerned about the looming deadline for the print paper—and “began to just edit the piece myself.”

Palin’s lawyers also questioned Bennet on his education history, noting that he went to a “prestigious college preparatory school” in Washington, D.C., before attending Yale University. In a moment of levity during otherwise contentious questioning, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff interrupted Palin’s lawyers to note a humorous error in the court reporter’s quick typing: “Jail university” to describe Bennet's ivy league alma mater.

Detailing the process by which the Times went about correcting the editorial, Bennett admitted to faults in the system and described an anxious scene in the wake of the error. “We were—this is a poor excuse, but an explanation—really scrambling,” he said.

Bennet explained that the morning after the story was published, at around 5:08 a.m., he asked several Times employees whether or not there was actually a link between Palin’s PAC and the Arizona shooting.

Vogt at one point asked the editor if he explored the possibility of taking down the editorial entirely after discovering the error. Bennet said no, because the Times has a policy against un-publishing pieces.

Bennet was later asked if he’d apologized to Palin, who remained immobile with her hands on her lap. “My hope is that as a consequence of this process, I now have,” he replied.

Vogt also referred to an internal Times performance review of Bennet by now-publisher A.G. Sulzberger in the aftermath of the incident. From the stand, the editor painted a picture of going out of his way to express contrition.

“I appeared before the full [NYT] board of directors to take responsibility and apologized. I don’t believe that was required of me.”

The trial represents a return to the public eye for Bennet, who once was a darling of the media class after shuffling between gigs as top editor at The Atlantic and opinion editor at Times. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, he was even rumored to be in the long-term running for the top editing job at the paper.

But in June 2020, Bennet resigned from the Times amid outrage over an op-ed published in the newspaper by right-wing Sen. Tom Cotton. In the piece, titled “Send in the Troops,” the Republican urged the deployment of federal military forces into American cities to suppress nationwide protests against police brutality.

Cotton’s piece was immediately met with backlash from within the Times, prompting Bennet to initially defend it. Ultimately, however, he admitted to staffers that he had not read the essay before it was published—and that the newspaper invited Cotton to write the column.

Days later, Bennet resigned.

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