Florida pension fund sues The New York Times, seeks records on Israel coverage bias

WASHINGTON (TNND) — Florida’s state-run public pension fund is suing The New York Times, seeking company materials to determine whether the board is allowing the newspaper to promote what Florida officials describe as biased editorial coverage against Israel.

The shareholder lawsuit escalates actions previously taken by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. (TNND)

The shareholder lawsuit escalates actions previously taken by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. This week, Uthmeier announced a formal shareholder petition against The New York Times Company that was jointly brought by the State Board of Administration and the conservative think tank National Center for Public Policy Research.

The New York Times tells its own investors, that its brand and reputation are its most important assets,” Uthmeier said during a September 23rd press conference.

Uthmeier argued in the petition that “in the absence of any board-level oversight, journalistic standards have been weaponized within the company,” threatening the company’s economic value and reputation. Noting that Florida’s pension fund holds over 161,000 shares on behalf of more than 1.2 million retirees.

This is not about editorial discretion. Today, this is about corporate governance. If you’re a business, you have duties, you have obligations,” Uthmeier said.

The petition comes weeks after Uthmeier sent The New York Times a separate letter demanding access to years’ worth of internal records and documents, citing concerns about how editorial standards might impact shareholder value.

That letter pointed to at least two pieces involving the Israel-Hamas war in which The New York Times either issued corrections or faced major pushback over published articles. One example cited was an article from October 2023 in which the headline attributed an explosion to an Israeli strike on the authority of a claim by Hamas. Days later, The New York Times published an editor’s note conceding that its coverage “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas” and left readers with an incorrect impression of what was known.

During his U.N. address Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is also fighting a war over information, though he did not mention or make any claims against The New York Times specifically.

But there is an eighth front to this war. It’s the war for truth. It is waged in the world’s media and most pretentiously, in social media,” Netanyahu said.

A New York Times spokesperson criticized the petition, telling The New York Post it has no merit. “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,” the spokesperson said.

The petition is also based in part on claims by an unnamed former New York Times newsroom employee who expressed concern about anti-Israel bias as early as 2019. An HR employee allegedly told them, “Maybe you should go find a place whose values align with yours.”