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Backlash forces NY Times to issue major correction to controversial GOP baseball shooting editorial
The New York Times issued a correction Thursday to a controversial editorial regarding Wednesday’s shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice outside the nation’s capital. (2016 file photo/Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

Backlash forces NY Times to issue major correction to controversial GOP baseball shooting editorial

The New York Times issued a major correction Thursday to a controversial editorial about Wednesday’s shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice outside the nation’s capital.

The shooting left five people — including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and two Capitol Police officers — injured.

In the original Times editorial, titled “America’s Lethal Politics,” the editors wrote, "Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably.”

They then pointed to the 2011 shooting that killed six people and wounded 13, including then-Rep. Gabby Giffords, as evidence of "political incitement" leading to actual violence:

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.

Conservatives and right-wing media were quick on Wednesday to demand forceful condemnation of hate speech and crimes by anti-Trump liberals. They're right. Though there's no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack, liberals should of course hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right.

However, there is no evidence linking Palin's political action committee’s map to the shooting.

CNN reported that Loughner’s fixation on Giffords began as early as 2007, years before the map was published. Additionally, the map did not put Giffords herself under crosshairs, but rather her district.

The Washington Post has repeatedly dubbed the claim that Loughner was incited by Palin’s political action committee “bogus.”

As expected, conservatives were quick to point out the inaccuracies in the editorial. But they weren't alone, multiple mainstream journalists joined in the criticism, including CNN's Jake Tapper and MSNBC's Chris Hayes.

Ben Dreyfuss from the liberal Mother Jones called the editorial "stupid" and reiterated the fact that Palin had nothing to do with the Giffords shooting.

On Thursday, the Times issued a correction to the online version of the editorial:

The revised editorial states:

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 that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs. But in that case no connection to the shooting was ever established.

In a Facebook post, Palin called the initial editorial “sickening.”

On Twitter, Palin suggested that she might have a libel case against the paper.

And many on Twitter felt that the Times’ correction was too little too late:

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