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The chief executive of The New York Times has said the company will “not be cowed” by Donald Trump’s $15bn lawsuit against the newspaper and accused the US president of enacting an “anti-press playbook”.

Meredith Kopit Levien described the lawsuit not only as legally baseless, but as part of a campaign to intimidate independent journalism, drawing parallels with authoritarian tactics in countries such as Turkey and Hungary.

“There is an anti-press playbook at this point . . . If you look at countries like Turkey and Hungary and India, those countries have elections but they also really work to quash opposition to the regime,” Levien said at a Financial Times conference.

“What has that anti-press playbook looked like in those places? It’s harassment of journalists, it’s discrediting of independent journalism. And it looks like what we’re seeing here.”

“The New York Times will not be cowed by this,” Levien said, in her first public comments since the lawsuit was filed.

Her comments came two days after Trump sued the media group for $15bn, accusing the newspaper of acting as “a full-throated mouthpiece” for the Democratic party.

The suit, filed in a US district court in Florida late on Monday, describes the Times as “a leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump”.

The showdown between Trump and the powerful US newspaper marks an escalation of the president’s legal offensive against the media — and a test of First Amendment protections for free speech and the press.

The suit is Trump’s fourth multibillion-dollar defamation claim against a major US news outlet since March 2024.

ABC News and CBS News both settled cases earlier this year, agreeing to pay $15mn and $16mn respectively to Trump’s planned presidential library.

In July, Trump sued The Wall Street Journal for $10bn over a report about a birthday note he allegedly sent to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Dow Jones, the newspaper’s parent company, said it would “vigorously defend” the suit.

Free speech experts have said Trump’s lawsuit against the Times appears meritless.

“The lawsuit is a statement of contempt for truth, the American public, the judicial process, and everything that deserves our respect in the American tradition,” said Rebecca Tushnet, a First Amendment professor at Harvard Law School.

RonNell Andersen Jones, a University of Utah law professor and Yale Information Society Project fellow, warned: “The merit of the suit is not the story here . . . My guess is the primary goals here were to have a legal filing that acts as a manifesto against the press, to lodge an action that will be crushingly expensive to defend, and to hope the suit will once again provide leverage against a powerful source of critical investigative reporting”.

Trump is seeking compensatory damages of “not less than $15bn”, as well as punitive damages to be determined by the court.

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The New York Times is valued at less than $10bn on the stock market, after shares reached an all-time high this month.

Levien said on Wednesday: “The lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims. I believe its purpose is to stifle independent journalism, to deter the kind of fact-based reporting that the Times and other institutions are known for”.

“It will not have that effect. The Times will continue to follow the facts where ever they may lead, even when that is to uncomfortable places”, she said.

The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment.