Press Release
National Center for Public Policy Research Free Enterprise Project (FEP)
Washington, D.C. — The National Center for Public Policy Research and the State Board of Administration of Florida (SBA), on behalf of the Florida Retirement System Trust Fund (FRSTF), have filed a lawsuit against The New York Times Company seeking corporate records concerning the company’s oversight of its journalistic standards and the systems it says are designed to ensure accurate and trustworthy reporting.
The lawsuit, State Board of Administration of Florida, on behalf of the Florida Retirement System Trust Fund, and National Center for Public Policy Research v. The New York Times Company, follows months of shareholder efforts to obtain records concerning the Times’ governance and oversight of its editorial standards.
The National Center first demanded access to the Times’ corporate records in June after a controversial opinion column by Nicholas Kristof raised serious questions about the newspaper’s fact-checking and source-verification practices. The shareholders subsequently narrowed their request to corporate governance materials rather than editorial content.
The May 11 Kristof column, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” alleged that Israeli prison guards had sexually abused Palestinian detainees, including training dogs to commit rape, and that such conduct was systematic. The Times defended the column as extensively fact-checked. Yet former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whom Kristof quoted by name, publicly said that he did not validate the allegations and that the placement of his quote “misrepresents my views.” The Times’ own senior editors subsequently gave conflicting accounts of the review process.
