"Here in the Real World.."

 It's an old country song, I think.  It's also a land the judge in the NYT libel case is familiarizing himself with, after learning jurors indeed were exposed to news that he had decided the case on rule of law -- concluding there was no way they could find the defendant had acted to the degree of recklessness or malice required in the Sullivan standard -- after jurors had spend many hours deliberating and had requested the transcripts of editor James Bennett and columnist Ross Douthat's trial testimony, to determine the fact of the case.

Why would a judge make his decision while the jury is deliberating?

Because they were taking their role seriously, and likely looking to determine if the witnesses were credible in their testimony.  

They were determining the facts of the case, if it was believable, or not, that extreme animosity (malice) and extreme workplace recklessness (as evidenced in a significant "reworking" of an underling's daily work in a rush job upon which Mr. Bennett the Big Boss apparently had not even read, or comprehended, the material the editorial was linking to...) made the paper just doggedly stuck to the message that a Palin ad had been linked to earlier shootings.

He was extremely wrong, and clearly could have made his decisions out of ignorance... or malice.

What the judge did, was spend the weekend pretending he was one of the jurors hearing the trail.  He concluded, that because Mr. Bennett had sent his rewrite, later at night on deadline, to the female underling with the message of, I've significantly reworked this.  Hope you understand why and can see the message i want to send.  "Take a look..."

To the judge, himself an insular professional man, tacking that "Take a look" line on to his email with the rewritten editorial attached meant Mr. Bennett was indeed ignorant of the errors in his writing, even recklessly so, BUT was soliciting someone to correct him or offer an opinion contradicting his work...

As if!

We don't know if the underling had children or a family to support, or if she was the rare female bird who regularly "stood up" to her bosses and pushed back or diplomatically corrected them when they were erring, but on this one, she remained silent and (surprise, surprise) the way the Big Guy rewrote it is the way it went to print...

You might think that's the Real World error the judge made in playing juror over the weekend, and that if he had been in that role of factfinder on the jury, someone might have gently pointed out to him how it works with underlings and Big Bosses in most American workplaces today...  

There is not an internal system of checks-and-balances when one class of workers relies on the good graces of the other for their daily bread.  More often, workers begrudgingly drag themselves to places where they compromise their professional ethics and personal morals and "go along to get along" so their families are provided for.

But the biggest Real World mistake the judge made was in thinking that if he so spoke it, that jurors would remain in the dark about his decision while they were still deliberating.  "Avoid the media" and news of the story in the media was practically impossible.

It was a smartphone PUSH notification of the news that alerted them, not a loved one welcoming them home who had heard the news, as I suspected.  Maybe both.  And the wiley judge even tried to "protect" his jurors by asking them not to talk to the media post-trial, if contacted, where surely he knows a reporter would ask if any of them had heard the judge's decision while the jury was still deliberating.

But now, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, the facts are out:  the jurors knew what the judge had decided, while they themselves were trying to determine if Mr. Bennett had acted with malice or recklessness to the level required by the Sullivan standard.  They were deliberating in good faith, and had asked for the Bennett and Douthat trial transcripts to guide them.

The jurors were randomly selected Americans who were honestly doing their job when the Big Boss Judge stepped in and silenced them:  "Keep on doing your work but it doesn't count for anything.  My word overrules yours, underlings."

Now where have we heard that one before?