Sarah Palin sues New York Times for defamation over editorial linking her to mass shooting

Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has sued a leading US newspaper for defamation, over an editorial that connected her to the 2011 shooting of a US congresswoman.

In the lawsuit, lawyers for Ms Palin said the article in the New York Times - published on the same day that a gunman opened fired on a group of Republican politicians practising baseball - linked an advertisement from her political action committee to the shooting that severely wounded then-Arizona Congressman Gabby Giffords.

The editorial had csaid that the advert had contained the images of individual Democratic politicians in cross hairs and said a link had been established between such rhetoric and the shooting. The paper had to update the article and add a note that said “no such link was established”.

“The editorial also incorrectly described a map distributed by a political action committee before that shooting. It depicted electoral districts, not individual Democratic lawmakers, beneath stylised cross hairs,” it added.

The lawsuit claimed that the article, published on the day that congressman Steve Scales was severely injured, “violated the law and its own policies”, when it accused her of inciting the 2011 attack that killed six people.

It said the newspaper displayed “blatant disregard of the substantial likelihood of causing her harm, thereby entitling Mrs Palin to an award of punitive damages”. It is seeking $75,000 in damages.

Ms Palin, 53, had strongly objected to the editorial in a Facebook post, calling it “sickening”.

“Despite commenting as graciously as I could on media coverage of yesterday's shooting, alas, today a perversely biased media's knee-jerk blame game is attempting to destroy innocent people with lies and more fake news,” she wrote.

A spokeswoman for the newspaper, Danielle Rhoades Ha, said in a statement that officials had not yet seen the lawsuit. It added: “We have not reviewed the claim yet but will defend against any claim vigorously.”