The parent company of The New York Times is facing a shareholder lawsuit alleging that the newspaper’s coverage of the Gaza war reflects an anti-Israel bias.
The complaint filed Wednesday centers in large part on the account of an unnamed Times employee who allegedly flagged possible violations of the paper’s editorial standards at least 15 times since 2019.
According to the lawsuit, the staffer reported concerns involving alleged antisemitism and what the employee viewed as anti-Israel bias to several departments within the company.
The employee’s concerns were repeatedly dismissed, the petition alleges.
In one alleged exchange, an HR representative reportedly said: ‘If you don’t like our values here, maybe you should go find a place whose values align with yours,’ according to the filing.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed the case in New York state court on behalf of the shareholders. The investors are seeking access to internal company records as they investigate whether The New York Times failed to uphold its own journalistic standards.
“When you’re a news agency, your credibility is everything,” Uthmeier said Wednesday during a news conference announcing the records request.
A Times spokesperson rejected the allegations, describing the lawsuit in a statement to the Daily Mail on Thursday as an attempt to pressure the newspaper into taking a more favorable approach to its Israel coverage.
Shareholders have sued The New York Times’ parent company, alleging that the newspaper’s recent coverage has displayed bias against Israel.
A Times spokesperson characterized the case as an effort to pressure the newspaper into covering Israel more favorably. Israeli forces conduct a raid in the occupied West Bank on Monday.
“This lawsuit has no merit and was brought for an improper purpose.
“Although it is presented as a corporate governance petition seeking to inspect the company’s books and records, it is plainly an effort to apply agenda-driven pressure to an independent media organization, promote unfounded claims of bias and discourage journalism protected by the First Amendment.
“We will defend against the suit vigorously,” the spokesperson said.
MORE ON THIS: 42-Year-Old Jailed for Assaulting Police at Anti-Migrant Protest
The State Board of Administration of Florida is among the petitioners. The agency manages the Florida Retirement System Trust Fund, which owns more than 160,000 shares of Times stock.
The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, is the other petitioner.
Both organizations argue that their status as shareholders gives them the right to examine the Times’ corporate records.
The filing also cites a peer-reviewed study published in 2024. That research found that The New York Times acknowledged 72 errors in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war between October 2023 and June 2024.
The lawsuit notes that 48 of those acknowledged errors concerned Israel.
The case relies heavily on an unnamed employee’s account of raising editorial concerns at least 15 times since 2019. The remains of a civilian vehicle reportedly struck by an Israeli UAV are pictured in central Gaza on Thursday.
The Times also acknowledged that the errors were identified by external critics rather than through the company’s own internal review process.
‘Corrections were late, vague and sometimes evasive,’ the suit claimed.
As it stands, the Times board lacks a sufficient mechanism for addressing internal complaints about standards, according to the petition.
‘The Company’s repeated publication of materially false or baseless factual assertions… supports a reasonable inference that the Board has not only failed in its obligation to monitor the Company’s internal controls, but [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,’ one portion read.
‘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.
‘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.
‘Making matters worse, numerous instances of gross violations of those controls were brought to the attention of Board members who double as Company executives, yet the Board seemingly refused to take any corrective or protective action.’