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.
A correction now appears at the bottom of the article:
Correction: June 15, 2017
An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that a link existed between political incitement and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords. In fact, no such link was established.
The Times came under intense criticism in conservative media for its “fake news” editorial.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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