Opinion by Erik Wemple: Palin trial exposes the allure of “both sides” journalism
,” an editorial published by the newspaper on June 14, 2017, regarding a shooting by James Hodgkinson at a baseball practice in Alexandria, Va., attended by Republican lawmakers; several people were injured, including Rep. Steve Scalise . The editorial attempted to draw a parallel with the 2011 Arizona shooting by Jared Lee Loughner, which killed six people and injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, among others.
That conscious goal came through in the text of the editorial. Hodgkinson was a stalwart supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders and was “virulently opposed to President Trump,” according to the piece. Here are the two paragraphs at the heart of Palin’s defamation complaint:Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably.
That’s both-sides boilerplate. Via Palin’s lawsuit, there are hundreds of pages on the public record documenting how it came about. The Hodgkinson shooting occurred after 7 a.m. on June 14. At 10:46 a.m., then-editorial board member Elizabeth Williamson asked her colleagues, “are we writing on the congressional shooting?”
Editorial board members continued trading messages as the afternoon wore on, with Bennet asking at 2:07 p.m. whether the Times had ever written “anything connecting to the Giffords shooting to some kind of incitement?” A colleague responded, “No, but Frank Rich did,”Story continues below advertisement
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