Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has threatened to sue The New York Times unless it hands over six years’ worth of records to clear up whether everything at the paper is on the up and up.
Uthmeier is a trustee and legal counsel for Florida’s State Board of Administration. The board oversees Florida’s state pension fund. The fund contains roughly 160,000 shares of The New York Times.
As a representative for the fund, the Florida AG is concerned that everything hasn’t been so swell at the Times. In a 28-page letter sent this week to the paper and its top officials, he cited several major corrections that the paper of record has been forced to submit after botching stories like this one:
The New York Times wrote a story about hospitals being spread too thin due to “Republican healthcare cuts”
The problem?
The hospital they cite as struggling is a “nonprofit” hospital with a $1B in offshore investments and a CEO making $5M/year.
pic.twitter.com/9cPbaj0Heu— Matt Whitlock (@MattWhitlock) August 6, 2026
One correction was made after the Jan. 6 riot.
“On January 8, 2021, the [Times] reported—on the authority of two unnamed officials—that an officer had died of injuries inflicted with a fire extinguisher,” the letter reads. “The account was cited in a Congressional impeachment filing.”
“The [Times] appended a note on February 12, 2021, that ‘new information has emerged,’ and the District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner subsequently determined that the officer had died of natural causes with no evidence of blunt-force trauma,” the letter continues.
The AG also accused the Times of committing the “repeated publication of factually unsupported content and from the perceived absence of any control and required supervision by the Company’s Board of Directors (the ‘Board’) over the editorial standards the Company itself has adopted to prevent it.”
In his letter, Uthmeier gave the Times two weeks to respond before he files a lawsuit.
“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.”
He expounded further on this threat in a video posted to social media:
After 10/7/23, the @nytimes issued dozens of corrections for incorrect and biased pro-Hamas coverage. As a trustee over FL’s retirement fund—a NYT stockholder—we are demanding their corporate board open the books.
The First Amendment protects speech—not ignoring shareholders! pic.twitter.com/47j0yZauHN
— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) August 10, 2026
“Since the New York Times got rid of its independent public editor, it has several times now admitted, only after outside pressure, that published articles did not meet its standards,” he said.
“According to reports, between October 7, 2023 and June 2024, the Times admitted 72 errors in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war that had to be corrected, and many, if not most, of those errors favored Hamas. Just this May, the Times published a column claiming Israel prison guards committed widespread sexual violence against Palestinian terrorist detainees,” he added.
The column was so false that Israel threatened to sue for defamation.
“The Times tells investors that its brand and reputation are its most important assets, and that if people see its journalism as unreliable or biased, the company can be hurt,” Uthmeier continued. “So, we want to exercise our rights under New York law to review the company’s internal board documents—meeting minutes, reports, and other materials—to see what the directors know.”
“The First Amendment protects what a newspaper publishes, but it does not let a public company’s board ignore its shareholders. The New York Times has 14 days to respond, and we look forward to hearing from them,” he concluded.
Responding to the AG, a Times spokesperson told the Miami Herald that Uthmeier is trying to curtail their First Amendment rights.
“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,” they said. “We will respond more fully in due course.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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