Last week, possibly hidden by all of the other hysterical reporting taking place, Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was back in a courtroom to square off against the New York Times in a long-simmering defamation lawsuit. If you are thinking this was a long-since concluded matter, you are not alone. This is the continuation of her suit initially brought against the paper in 2017, and it has been a tortuous process.

Initially dismissed by a judge, Palin’s suit was brought to trial after appeal, and ultimately, a jury ruled against the onetime GOP VP candidate. She appealed that decision and won in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals last year, vacating the jury result based on a number of issues with the case. Last Tuesday, the new case was launched, and there was high melodramatics, as Rusty Weiss covered this weekend.

James Bennet, an editor who played a significant role in publishing the piece, testified on Thursday. “I blew it, you know,” Bennet said. “I made a mistake.” Fighting back tears, he explained that he was “really upset, and I still am, obviously," over the whole ordeal. “I did, and I do apologize to Governor Palin for this mistake,” insisted Bennet.

RELATED: Essex Files: Sarah Palin Gets Another Crack at Making the New York Times Pay for Reckless Article

What has been apparent for the past year now is that something that was almost always brought up verbally but never acted upon — suing a media outlet for smears and defamation — has become more than a rare occurrence. Defamation suits in the press have not only become commonplace but are actually delivering results against the news outlets. 

It was quite a surprise when a high school student, Nick Sandmann, brought a defamation suit against CNN, and the cable news network settled the case before going before a jury. Years later, Fox News was all the talk in the press when it settled its massive suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. The galling reality was the number of outlets casting scorn at Fox for the alleged admission of guilt – including, of all of them, CNN itself. But now we have seen an avalanche of these defamation suits coming forward, and the even more surprising aspect is the courts finding cause to go to trial. 

ABC News settled a case with Donald Trump over George Stephanopoulos referring to him as a “rapist.” MSNBC and parent network NBC News recently settled a case over fraudulent reporting where a doctor sued for being accused of performing a number of unneeded hysterectomies on immigrants, referring to him as “the Uterus Collector.” President Trump has two other cases that are active, one against CBS News concerning election fraud over its manipulated Kamala Harris interview, and another with the Pulitzer Prize Committee and its refusal to retract awards for the fraudulent reporting on Russian collusion. Media Matters failed to sway a judge to dismiss the lawsuit they face from Elon Musk. Dominion is also bringing suit against Newsmax currently.

And of course, there was the monumental case (though you would not know it due to the paucity of media reports) where a jury found CNN liable for defamation with malice against Zachary Young, this January. If Fox was to be demeaned as less than reputable for settling its suit, then how is it not worse that in a courtroom, CNN was shown to have committed deeply fraudulent journalism?

What needs to be looked at is how it is that something that used to be near impossible to establish in court is suddenly finding a flurry of cases deemed to have merit for a jury trial? It might be that the departure from journalistic ethics has actually become so stark that courts are seeing more than enough evidence of malicious intent on display. Taking a look at the Palin-Times case demonstrates this, as a start.

This case stems from what took place all the way back in 2011, when Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot. Some warped media outlets at the time claimed that a website where Palin had indicated political districts Republicans should concentrate their electoral efforts was the cause of the violence. That site used crosshairs symbols on a map to indicate where campaigns should focus, and this strained attempt to level blame onto Palin was circulated. It was quickly debunked, as there was no indication the shooter had ever seen this map – and some examples of the Democrats using a similar method were shown as well.

But the Times ran an editorial that reiterated this false claim, and there is a telling aspect – the editorial ran six years after that shooting, and other articles that ran in the Times had even refuted that there was any connection to Palin. This could not be dismissed as an errant opinion by a guest writer, as the paper’s editorial board had made the entry.

And in most of these recent or pending cases, more evidence of journalistic malpractice has been displayed. The MSNBC story was based on the testimony of a lone source, all while the targeted doctor implored them to seek him out for clarification, and their source then later recanted her claims. ABC News settled its case with Trump when it was shown that host Stephanopoulos was told many times to avoid using “rape” on the air because of the legal snare it presented. 

The CNN case was especially egregious because internal documents showed that a number of editors were declaring the report deeply flawed, yet producers were seen telling the reporter Alex Marquardt to go after the focus of the story, Zachary Young. Now, Young has his case with the Associated Press because, as he was a contractor working with corporations to extract their workers from problem locations, the news syndicate misrepresented his work by alleging he was “smuggling” people out of Afghanistan, indicating illegal activities.

It is almost staggering to see this wave of valid defamation suits not only being brought up but moving forward. It used to be that the burden of proof of journalistic wrongdoing was so high that it was practically futile to even go to court. Now it is becoming common practice. This would not be the case if there were still a modicum of integrity in the industry. Now these cases are a regular feature, which explains the condition of journalism today.

Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.  

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