“THE NEW YORK TIMES STILL OWES SARAH PALIN AN APOLOGY.” It’s heartening to know that there are some journalists out there who still see the journalist’s duty as one to truth and common decency, not political partisanship and chest-thumping. Media reporter Erik Wemple notes in today’s Washington Post that he may have been initially wrong in seeing the case as stronger than it was:

Never again will we sell short jurisprudence that protects journalists when writing about public figures. These protections are so powerful that an editor, without doing any research to speak of, can insert language in an editorial accusing a politician of inciting murder — and secure a quick and unequivocal bouncing of the case.

But  at the same time Wemple makes the more important point that:

Dismissal, however, is less than a full-throated victory for the New York Times […] The lingering lesson of the case is that The New York Times could well have saved itself the hassle of even a short-lived court proceeding, though doing so would have required it to shed its institutional arrogance for a day or two. Consider that the paper’s response to learning of the falsehood was sufficient to satisfy a judge ruling on a lawsuit, but not sufficient to satisfy any standard of decency and respect. The immediate correction, after all, didn’t even mention Palin’s name: “An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that a link existed between political incitement and and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords. In fact, no such link was established.” Nor did a second correction.

(Emphasis added).