Florida pension fund sues Times over Israel coverage records

A human resources employee at The New York Times told a Jewish former video-desk worker who had raised repeated concerns about antisemitism and anti-Israel bias that if she did not like the paper’s values, maybe she should go find a place whose values align with hers.

That exchange now sits inside a shareholder petition filed Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026, in New York County Supreme Court. Florida’s State Board of Administration, acting for the Florida Retirement System Trust Fund, and the National Center for Public Policy Research ask a judge to compel The New York Times Company to produce internal records on how its board oversees editorial standards, source verification, corrections and related reputational risk. The company has refused for four months.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the petition at a Wednesday press conference. The Florida Retirement System Trust Fund holds 161,375 shares of New York Times Class A stock. The State Board of Administration invests for more than 1.2 million public employees and retirees. Uthmeier cast the filing as corporate governance, not a suit over any single article. Businesses hold First Amendment rights, he said, and they also carry legal duties to shareholders.

In its own disclosures to investors, the Times identifies brand and reputation as central assets and warns that perceptions of unreliable or biased journalism are a material business risk. The shareholders say they put a plain question to the company: does the board oversee compliance with the paper’s published standards on facts, quotations, photographs and timely corrections? According to the petition, Times counsel stated during a Sept. 1 conference that the company would not produce documents responsive to a narrowed request.

The narrowed request seeks board-level materials—committee charters, agendas, reporting structures and records showing whether editorial compliance issues reach directors. It excludes reporters’ notes, unpublished drafts, source identities, editorial deliberations and attorney work product. The proceeding seeks no damages and names no individual directors as defendants. It rests on shareholder inspection rights under New York Business Corporation Law, state common law and civil procedure rules.

Charlie Stadtlander, executive director of media relations and communications for the Times, gave the company’s response. “This lawsuit has no merit and was brought for an improper purpose,” he said. “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. We will defend against the suit vigorously.”

The petition cites 72 errors the Times admitted in its corrections column over eight months from October 2023 through June 2024. On Sept. 15, an article described Sharif Labad, killed in a drone strike, as a Civil Defense rescue worker and made no mention that the Israel Defense Forces had identified him as a Hamas Nukhba force member who invaded Israel on October 7. That story has not been updated. The same day, a caption overstated bomb weight as 40,000 pounds rather than the actual 2,000 pounds, a twentyfold error. An editors’ note on coverage of a NAZA documentary about Gaza called the framing that Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7 an editing error; the note concerned the deaths of 1,200 people and the taking of 250 hostages.

The filing also rests on the account of an unnamed Jewish former employee who spent nearly a decade on the video desk. She raised concerns about antisemitism and anti-Israel bias at least 15 times from 2019 until her departure in March 2026, using managers, the standards desk and human resources. In an interview she said, “The public deserves a better picture of how the Times manufactures the news when Jews or Israel are involved.” She asked to remain anonymous out of concern for her family’s safety. According to the complaint, when she complained about anti-Israel bias, a human resources representative answered with the line about finding a workplace whose values align with hers.

The shareholders further note the paper’s rehiring of Gaza freelancer Soliman Hijjy shortly after Oct. 7 despite social media posts praising Adolf Hitler. A manager acknowledged in a recorded conversation that Hijjy’s posts did not meet standards. The Times said at the time that it had addressed the posts and that the freelancer had maintained high journalistic standards.