Florida’s Republican attorney general is employing a novel strategy in an attempt to prove “editorial malpractice” at The New York Times — seeking to use his control over the state’s pension fund, which invests in the media company, to compel the release of private documents that he claims will prove the company faces substantial harm due to bias.
James Uthmeier, Florida’s top law enforcement officer, sent a 28-page letter to the Times on Monday requesting internal documents related to the newspaper’s board of directors.
Uthmeier gave the board two weeks to respond, and threatened to file suit if it does not answer.
This is at least the third letter the Times has received this year regarding potential lawsuits from shareholders demanding it turn over records related to its coverage, but the first from a sitting government official.
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Uthmeier lists four instances where he says the media company used an “interested or unnamed source” to publish a claim without independent verification, and later had to issue a correction.
They include the scandal around a 2020 podcast called “Caliphate,” where the central source was found to have lied and was later charged by Canadian authorities. The Times launched an internal investigation and called the incident an “institutional failing.”
Uthmeier also cited a correction the newspaper issued regarding the cause of death of a U.S. Capitol Police officer during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot; an editor’s note issued on a story that said it “relied too heavily on claims made by Hamas”; and an opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof on the alleged rape of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokesperson for The New York Times, told NOTUS in a statement that the letter “is a clear attempt to chill First Amendment-protected journalism.”
As part of his role as Florida’s attorney general, Uthmeier serves as legal counsel for the State Board of Administration, which manages the state’s public pension funds. Those accounts own a collective 160,000 shares of NYT stock.
Uthmeier is seeking to use that influence to demand six years of internal board documents. He says that although the First Amendment protects speech, the company cannot ignore the demands of its shareholders.
In his letter, Uthmeier states that his investigation is “grounded in concrete corporate risk,” as opposed to “general dissatisfaction with editorial judgement.” He alleges that there are documented instances of the media company inadequately applying editorial standards to stories in its opinion section, and that his duty to oversee Florida’s public-sector pension program gives him the right to investigate.
Uthmeier takes particular issue with a piece that ran in the Times’ opinion section, headlined “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” which claimed in part that Israeli soldiers had committed assaults against Palestinian prisoners — including the use of dogs to commit rape. The piece prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to threaten a lawsuit that has not yet been filed.
In his demand letter, Uthmeier asks for records detailing conversations with the board of directors regarding that opinion piece, as well as others. In his letter, he said that he was not asking the Times’ to “change news coverage or retract an article,” instead claiming that he was simply overseeing a risky investment.
“What matters here is that a host of red flags, presumably shown to the Board, establish that the Company suffers from biased reporting practices that threaten, in the Board’s own words, the Company’s ‘key assets’: its ‘brand’ and ‘reputation,’” Uthmeier wrote.
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