That's about what I expected to happen. Palin couldn't establish the actual malice requirement. By the way, even though I'm no fan of Palin, I think this requirement is horse crap for three reasons. First, there's no evidence that the founders intended the First Amendment to put public officials at a disadvantage when it comes to a defamation suit. The purpose of the freedoms of speech and press is to enable the spreading of truth, not falsity.
Second, even if we accept the actual malice requirement, it's far too restrictive. Reading this opinion is like reading a Texas Supreme Court opinion in which the court is going through contortions to make sure the plaintiff loses. Basically they just crap on every piece of evidence she has, and this opinion isn't unique. Most defamation opinions read like this. The effect is to narrow the cause of action through evidentiary burdens and restricting what a jury is allowed to infer. Well if you do that enough, you eventually reach the point that, absent an admission of guilt (which you'll virtually never see), it's impossible to win. We're getting to that point with defamation suits involving public figures.
And it's important to note who's making this kind of ruling. It's the judge. That means that not only is this requirement making the plaintiff lose, it's denying him or her a day in court altogether. I think we're at the point in which this judge-made requirement is becoming very difficult to reconcile with the plaintiff's constitutional right to a trial by jury.
Third, I don't think this requirement has given us a better or freer political media. It has given us one in which the spread of disinformation is less difficult. Let's keep in mind that this requirement is relatively new (from the mid-'60s). Prior to that, the media had to give a crap if what it printed was true or not. Does anybody really think the media of Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, and David Brinkley was inferior or less informative than the crap we have on TV or in the printed media today? It's almost too ridiculous of a question to even ask.
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