James Bennet to Proceed Testifying in Sarah Palin Libel Trial

James Bennet, the previous editorial web page editor for The New York Occasions, is predicted to proceed testifying on Wednesday within the trial that may decide whether or not The Occasions is held accountable for defamation in america for the primary time in at least 50 years.

The Occasions is being sued by Sarah Palin, the previous governor of Alaska, whose authorized group tried for most of the day on Tuesday to persuade the jury that Mr. Bennet and different Occasions journalists acted unexpectedly and recklessly in publishing an editorial that falsely linked Ms. Palin’s political rhetoric to a mass taking pictures.

They’re additionally making an attempt to ascertain that The Occasions was sluggish in appending a correction, which didn’t title her or supply an apology to Ms. Palin.

They centered on emails between Mr. Bennet and different members of the Occasions opinion workers to ascertain a timeline between the publication of the editorial on the night time of June 14, 2017, and the addition of the correction the following morning.

The editorial, which lamented the nation’s more and more heated political discourse, was written after the taking pictures at a congressional baseball group apply in June 2017 that left Consultant Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, gravely wounded. As Mr. Bennet was modifying the piece earlier than publication, he inserted an incorrect reference to a 2010 map from Ms. Palin’s political motion committee that included illustrations of cross hairs over 20 Home districts held by Democrats.

That addition — “the hyperlink to political incitement was clear” — asserted that there was a hyperlink between the map and the 2011 taking pictures that critically injured one other member of Congress, Gabrielle Giffords, and killed six others in Tucson, Ariz. The truth is, such a hyperlink was by no means established.