Palin Sues New York Times over Fake News

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has filed suit against The New York Times late Tuesday alleging that the failing paper defamed her when the disreputed media outlet tried to blame her for political violence earlier this month.

The suit centers around the paper’s attempt to blame Palin for the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords despite the fact that the shooter had no political affiliations whatsoever.

Citing the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, in Tucson, the editorial said: “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.”

Palin took to social media just after the Scalise shooting to voice her outrage at The Times‘ bad editorial decision:

Even NBCNews admits that there could be no way that Palin’s map could have incited Giffords’ shooter.

In fact, writings by the gunman in the 2011 case, Jared Loughner, made it clear that he’d been planning the attack for a long time before the Palin map was circulated. Moreover, the map didn’t depict Giffords and the other Democrats themselves in cross-hairs — only outlines of their congressional districts.

The Times quickly corrected the editorial but the damage had been done and Palin’s lawyers aren’t giving any quarter.

The Times soon corrected the editorial, saying there was no link between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting, as well as clarifying its depiction of the map. The correction didn’t mention Palin by name.

In the lawsuit (PDF), filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, lawyers for Palin accused The Times of having published “a statement about her that it knew to be false” and of following up with a correction that didn’t sufficiently make up for “the falsehoods that the paper published.”

Fake news has had free reign to drop this crap on the American people for years and now, someone is fighting back.