Compared with its tepid reaction to Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News and the $787 million Fox ultimately paid Dominion over the lies it told about the company after the 2020 election, the Media Research Center has shown much more interest in lawsuits against non-right-wing media outlets. Another example of that is Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against the New York Times. A January 2022 “editor’s pick” item by Kyle Drennen hyped a right-wing New York Post article on the suit, followed by a post by Clay Waters trashing the Times and defending Palin:
A June 2017 New York Times editorial falsely linked former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to the 2011 attempted assassination of Arizona Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that left six dead. Palin filed a defamation suit. (Jury selection was delayed after Palin tested positive for Covid.)
Tim Graham used a column that month to whine about the high legal standard Palin needed to meet to succeed in her lawsuit:
The Times is worried that the press’s free ride in the judicial system may be ending, as demonstrated in Jeremy Peters’ piece on the front of Monday’s Business section, “Sarah Palin v. New York Times Spotlights Push to Loosen Libel Law.”
The libelous editorial was published on June 14, 2017, the same day a Bernie Sanders’ supporter opened fire at a baseball field where Republican congressmen were practicing, injuring several people, including Rep. Steve Scalise. The headline was “America’s Lethal Politics.”
Despite downplaying Fox News’ laws by bizarrely insisting that “Fox News never reported that Dominion and Smartmatic caused a mass shooting,” Graham concluded: “The central irony in this case is that media outlets despise going through the process of serving up their own internal memos and having their own professional behavior evaluated in public. They demonstrate the old maxim about who can dish it out but can’t take it. Even losing in court doesn’t mean conservatives can’t win in exposing seriously awful journalism.”
When Palin lost her lawsuit, the MRC didn’t take it well. Graham whined in a February 2022 column:
The media cheered as a judge and jury dismissed Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against The New York Times over their smears claiming she incited a mass shooting in Arizona. They rounded up “free speech” professors to back them in their freedom to smear[.] […]
Smearing Sarah Palin for inspiring a mass shooter wasn’t an “honest mistake.” The idea that you have to prove “actual malice” is a weird standard.
This was joined by another “editor’s pick” post by Drennen touting the right-wing blog Hot Air similarly raging about the verdict.
When Palin got another bite at the apple to relitigate her lawsuit against the time earlier this year, Nicholas Fondacaro eagerly previewed it in an April 16 post while grousing that non-right-wingers had opinions about it:
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and the left-wing New York Times were back in a New York courtroom on Monday for jury selection in the retrial of the former’s defamation suit against the latter. Palin scored a retrial after a biased judge inappropriately announced that he was going to rule against her no matter what the first jury found, with jurors subsequently finding out. The start of the retrial drew begrudging coverage from NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, who lamented that the case had new life.
It was clear from the opening sentence that Folkenflik didn’t hold the case in high regard, quoting Yogi Berra while quipping: “As another New York City institution once said, it’s déjà vu all over again for The New York Times and former Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin.”
Folkenflik tried to downplay how The Times accused Palin of being responsible for the assassination attempt of former Democratic Representative Gabby Giffords (AZ), suggesting it was only something “Palin’s attorneys argued” happened.
When Palin swiftly lost again, Fondacaro lamented in an April 22 post:
On Tuesday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R) lost the retrial of her defamation suit against The New York Times after she alleged the editorial board defamed her by linking her to the assassination attempt on Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. The retrial came after improper conduct by the Manhattan federal judge overseeing the case affected the jury’s deliberations, a panel of judges found.
The nine-person, Manhattan jury only took a couple of hours to reach their decision. Earlier in the afternoon, The Times published their own report noting that the jury began their deliberations, with the ruling coming a little after 4 o’clock p.m. Eastern.
[…]Speaking with reporters outside the courthouse, Palin seemed to give mixed signals on what her next moves would be. At one point she said she wanted to “get on with life” and “go home to a beautiful family,” while also acknowledging: “We haven’t talked about what we’ll do next legally.”
Perhaps anticipating another Palin loss, Fondacaro didn’t bother covering the trial.