Shareholders have filed a lawsuit against The New York Times, claiming the company presented a biased perspective of Israel.
The lawsuit, filed by the State Board of Administration of Florida, representing the Florida Retirement System Trust Fund and the National Center for Public Policy Research, argues that The Times’ “repeated publication of materially false or baseless factual assertions, many later admitted internally or disproven externally, supports a reasonable inference that the Board has not only failed in its obligation to monitor the Company’s internal controls, but it has allowed such flagrantly selective application of the internal controls to support the conclusion that in the absence of any Board-level oversight, journalistic standards have been weaponized within the Company to serve the personal agendas of unchecked editors.”
“That inference is strengthened by what Petitioners’ investigation did not find: any Board-level committee, independent oversight function, or other objective third party charged with assessing whether the Company effectively enforces and complies with its own editorial standards,” the filing continues, adding, “Put plainly, although the Company adopted certain internal journalistic controls (including controls against biased reporting and misreporting), Petitioners found no indication that the Board established any mechanism for information about compliance with those controls to reach the Board.”
The lawsuit draws attention to whistleblower comments dating to 2023, where one individual said, “I feel that I’m on a desk that is particularly biased against Israel … I can’t tell if the Masthead does not see that our desk is biased, does not see it as a problem to be resolved, or just hasn’t figured out how to get a handle on it.”
The complaint further noted that the publication rejected material because the source was “pro-Israel.” The Times also pushed “calls to use ‘Genocide,'” and branded pro-Hitler comments by a freelancer as “just some jokes,” according to the filing.
Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said in a statement obtained by Reuters that the lawsuit “has no merit and was brought for an improper purpose.”
“Although it is positioned as a corporate governance petition to inspect the company’s books and records, it is a transparent attempt to exert agenda-driven pressure against an independent media organization, level false allegations of bias and chill journalism protected by the First Amendment,” he added. “We will defend against the suit vigorously.”
