NY Times Blamed Sarah Palin for Gaby Giffords Attack, Then Apologized

Following the Virginia shooting which has left Rep. Steve Scalise reportedly still fighting for his life, the New York Times brought out an old blood libel.

In a scramble to spread the blame for gun violence across the spectrum after it became clear the shooter was a hard-core leftist, the Times editorial board placed blame on Sarah Palin for the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords.

And now that Palin is threatening a libel suit, they've sheepishly published a correction (not a mea culpa, mind you) which still blames Palin but offers a very weak admission that no "connection was established".

In the end, the editorial is nothing more than grease on a fire. Here's more from Breitbart...

The New York Times issued an online correction Thursday to its lead editorial, which claimed that Sarah Palin had incited Jared Loughner to commit the mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011 that killed six and wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ).

The editorial was a response to the shooting Wednesday in Alexandria, Virginia, in which gunman James T. Hodgkinson targeted Republican members of Congress at a baseball practice. Four players were wounded, including Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), who remains in the hospital in critical condition.

Originally, the Times article, "America's Lethal Politics," had stated:

Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin's political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.

It also added that "there's no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack" in Wednesday's shooting.

As Breitbart News explained Wednesday evening, after the editorial was published online, all of the Times' factual claims above were false.

Now, the article reads:

Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl. At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin's political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs. But in that case no connection to the shooting was ever established.

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