WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 Florida\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The shareholder lawsuit escalates actions previously taken by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. (TNND)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The New York Times tells its own investors, that its brand and reputation are its most important assets,\u201d Uthmeier said during a September 23rd press conference.<\/p>\n
Uthmeier argued in the petition that \u201cin the absence of any board-level oversight, journalistic standards have been weaponized within the company,\u201d threatening the company\u2019s economic value and reputation. Noting that Florida\u2019s pension fund holds over 161,000 shares on behalf of more than 1.2 million retirees.<\/p>\n
This is not about editorial discretion. Today, this is about corporate governance. If you\u2019re a business, you have duties, you have obligations,\u201d Uthmeier said.<\/p>\n
The petition comes weeks after Uthmeier sent The New York Times a separate letter demanding access to years\u2019 worth of internal records and documents, citing concerns about how editorial standards might impact shareholder value.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s note conceding that its coverage \u201crelied too heavily on claims by Hamas\u201d and left readers with an incorrect impression of what was known.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But there is an eighth front to this war. It\u2019s the war for truth. It is waged in the world\u2019s media and most pretentiously, in social media,\u201d Netanyahu said.<\/p>\n
A New York Times spokesperson criticized the petition, telling The New York Post it has no merit. \u201cAlthough it is positioned as a corporate governance petition to inspect the company\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
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, \u201cMaybe you should go find a place whose values align with yours.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 Florida\u2019s state-run public pension fund is suing The New York Times, seeking company materials to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-356348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}