Earlier this month, we argued that former Alaska Governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin ought to win a libel and defamation lawsuit against The New York Times. The paper blamed her for the 2011 murderous attack in Tucson. As we feared, however, such cases are extremely hard to win for public figures, and the judge threw it out one day before the jury found in favor of the Times.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board reflects:

The New York Times won a legal victory Tuesday against Sarah Palin’s libel suit, but the cost has been steep. Ms. Palin couldn’t get over the high legal bar of proving “actual malice” to a jury, but the case exposed slipshod editing and how a left-wing narrative skewed the publication’s commentary against an easy political target. In that sense the former Alaska Governor won even in defeat.

This was no heroic stand for a free press against a government censor or powerful figure. The case was a purely defensive effort to show that the falsehoods published about Ms. Palin in a 2017 editorial were unfortunate mistakes. The Times’ defense is that it was merely incompetent, not malicious.

The Journal’s editors know all about deadlines and writing or editing mistakes, and they’re even thankful for the rigorous “malice” standard that protects opinion writers from frivolous suits.

But the evidence produced at trial showed that the Times’ mistake was more than a misstated fact or two. The episode the Times was commenting on had nothing to do with Ms. Palin. The event was the shooting assault on GOP Members of Congress by a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter.

The Times dragged Ms. Palin in gratuitously because it was trying to make a point about incitement of political violence.

The Leftmedia is full of this sort of disgraceful defamation, and it’s a shame that no accountability will yet be had in this case — especially because testimony revealed that this false narrative lives on, even at the Times, even after its “correction.” The Journal concludes:

The Palin case is no triumph for journalism. It’s a humiliation for the Times, and a cautionary tale of how politically congenial narratives can lead us astray. The caution applies to all of us in the business.

Read the whole thing here.