Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, representing the state's pension fund, is demanding under threat of lawsuit that New York Times directors divulge six years' worth of records to prove the company is running smoothly and Florida assets aren't at risk.
He's concerned that the paper is becoming "untrustworthy."
In a 28-page letter , Uthmeier pointed to four instances since 2020 in which the New York Times either issued corrections or faced major pushback over published articles or opinion pieces— insisting that potential high-up failures are damaging the Times' credibility and could harm shareholders.
Uthmeier is a trustee and legal counsel for Florida's State Board of Administration, which oversees the state's pension fund and owns about 160,000 shares of New York Times stock .
He gave the New York Times' board of directors two weeks to respond; if they don't, Uthmeier said he will sue them in the New York Supreme Court.
"A documented public pattern of standards that tighten or slacken based on the politics of the subject of a story creates an enterprise-level risk," he wrote. "Shareholders have tools to ensure the Board prevents The Times from becoming a newspaper the public comes to regard as untrustworthy."
Uthmeier's office did not respond to questions on whether Florida would sell its shares.
This is the latest in a host of demands, lawsuits, or subpoenas filed by Uthmeier since Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him chief legal officer last February.
During his election year bid to stay attorney general, he's transformed the office from a quiet , media-averse role representative of his predecessor, now U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, into an active, legally intensive position that's pursued everything from criminal investigations into Raul Castro and OpenAI to claims that Catholic bishops have flouted their duties.
Uthmeier's Monday claims center around the Times' 2017 firing of its independent public editor, a position created in 2003 to respond to a plagiarism scandal. Uthmeier — who says his letter of demand has nothing to do with editorial judgments — is asking for all board documents, reports, threats of lawsuits and more in his letter, to review "what its directors know."
Two of the four pieces Uthmeier cited in his letter involve the Israel-Hamas War — including a 2023 article that was later noted to have "relied too heavily on claims by Hamas" and a bombshell column written earlier this year that alleged both Israeli guards and trained dogs were sexually assaulting Palestinian prisoners.
The New York Times defended the piece as accurate, although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would sue the company for defamation. No lawsuit has been filed.
In response to Uthmeier, a New York Times spokesperson accused the attorney general of operating under the guise of business concerns while actually attempting to curtail the First Amendment."
"We are aware of the demand letter, which, while positioned as a request under corporate law, is a clear attempt to chill First Amendment-protected journalism," a spokesperson said via email. "We will respond more fully in due course."
This is the third shareholder letter sent to the New York Times over its Israel coverage. The other two were sent by the National Jewish Advocacy Center.
