New York Times Nightmare: Shareholder Revolt Threatens To Expose Paper’s Inner Sanctum

A shareholder revolt against The New York Times is gaining serious legal muscle, with a growing bloc of law firms now threatening to drag the paper of record into court unless it hands over internal records probing whether its board has been asleep at the wheel while the newsroom churns out coverage slanted against Israel.

On Tuesday, the National Center for Public Policy Research, backed by the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC) and two heavyweight firms, fired off a fresh demand letter giving Times brass until July 21 to cough up board materials or face a lawsuit in Manhattan’s Supreme Court, The Washington Free Beacon reported on Tuesday.

“The inclusion of two new prominent law firms — Grant & Eisenhofer and Schall, Brown & Schwartz — on NJAC’s campaign suggests that the Times may face difficulty dismissing their fresh concerns, which extend past mere anti-Israel bias to now encompass velvet-gloved reporting on two high-profile, anti-Israel Democrats,” the Free Beacon noted.

This is round two. The coalition first came knocking in May, furious over a widely panned Nicholas Kristof column that accused Israeli forces of using dogs to sexually assault Palestinian detainees — allegations that leaned heavily on sources tied to Hamas and that the paper’s own executive editor later admitted his newsroom “probably wouldn’t have” run “that exact piece.”

Now the group says things have only gotten worse. Its new target: the Times’ soft-touch June investigation into Senate candidate Graham Platner, who was accused by ex-girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield of a horrifying pattern of abuse. The paper said it couldn’t corroborate her account — even though, Fifield says, she handed reporters witnesses, screenshots, diary entries, and more. Platner’s campaign didn’t implode until a second woman, this time a Democrat, told POLITICO he’d raped her.

The lawyers argue the Times gave shifting, contradictory explanations for its reporting standards — telling one outlet the story met “our standards,” and another that it only included facts that were confirmable — and say that inconsistency alone justifies letting shareholders peek behind the curtain.

“Stockholder seeks to investigate whether the Board is engaging in any form of oversight to ensure that the New York Times remains a news reporting agency worth anything to its stockholders, rather than becoming viewed by the public as a simple propaganda arm that selects its articles and reporting in a way that ignores truth in favor of pushing false narratives,” the letter states.

The letter also revives an ugly side-by-side: a March story that framed New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman’s wife as courting controversy over pro-Israel social media likes, versus a far gentler piece days later about democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife, who’d liked posts celebrating the October 7 massacre. Critics say the paper bent over backward to protect one and pounce on the other.

Beyond the Israel-related complaints, the filing dredges up the Times’ long history of humiliating corrections — from the Wen Ho Lee spying debacle to the “Caliphate” podcast hoax to a wildly inflated child COVID hospitalization figure — arguing it all points to a board that looks away until public embarrassment forces its hand.

The Times, for its part, isn’t budging, with a spokeswoman dismissing the campaign, saying, “As we told the National Jewish Advocacy Center and National Center for Public Policy Research in response to an earlier demand letter, while positioned under corporate law, it is a clear attempt to chill First Amendment-protected journalism.”

But the shareholders insist this isn’t about politics or the First Amendment — it’s about whether the people overseeing America’s most influential newspaper are actually doing their jobs. If the Times doesn’t blink by July 21, the fight moves to a courtroom.