Sarah Palin sues New York Times for defamation

Sarah Palin, the former Governor of Alaska and a US vice-presidential candidate, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times.

The ultra-conservative politician argued in her lawsuit, filed at the US District Court for the southern district of New York, that the newspaper knowingly published false information on its website on June 14 that linked her to a 2011 mass shooting, Efe news reported.

The editorial was published on June 14, the day of shooting in a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, where several Republican legislators were practising for a charity match and which left Congressman Steve Scalise seriously injured.

In the editorial, the NYT established a link between a political committee in support of Palin and the January 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six people and severely wounded then-Democratic representative Gabby Giffords.

According to the NYT piece, the committee circulated maps of several constituencies marked with crosses that represented Giffords and other Democrat leaders.

The NYT later issued a correction and also tweeted that it had never established any such link between the Palin support committee and the Tucson shooting.

Palin called the article an attempt to slander her by making her appear responsible for inciting a mass shooting at a political event.

She also claimed in the lawsuit that the correction "did not approach the degree of the retraction and apology necessary and warranted by The Times's false assertion that Palin incited murder".

In a statement, an NYT spokesperson said the paper had not yet reviewed the lawsuit "but will defend against any claim vigorously".

--IANS

soni/vt