Whistleblower Accuses New York Times of Systemic ‘Anti-Israel Bias’ in Bombshell Lawsuit

(Photo Credit: Brian Zak/Sipa Press via AP)

A former New York Times employee accused the paper of having a systemic “anti-Israel bias” which infects its reporting and produces “biased and unreliable” stories that misinform its readers, according to a new lawsuit.

The whistleblower — who worked on the paper’s video desk from 2016 until earlier this year — is a Jewish woman who asked to remain anonymous. She pointed to at least 15 examples where the paper’s alleged bias against Israel sabotaged its work, both before and after the Hamas terrorist attack in October 2023. She also said the paper’s HR department was hostile when she pointed out its coverage was inappropriately slanted.

“Highlighting the deep inversion of journalistic controls within The New York Times operations, the response to the Whistleblower from the Human Resources department about the reporting of many instances of anti-Israel bias by fellow journalists was stark: ‘If you don’t like our values here, maybe you should go find a place whose values align with yours,'” the lawsuit claimed.

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday by the State Board of Administration of Florida on behalf of Florida’s retirement system and the National Center for Public Policy Research in the New York state court system; The Free Press was the first outlet to report it.

The shareholders cite “biased or unreliable reporting,” inadequate “internal editorial controls,” and violations of employee conduct codes alleged by the whistleblower, and claim this led to “repeated publication of materially false or baseless factual assertions,” in the Times that has hurt the stock value of the paper’s parent company, The New York Times Company. Specifically, the complaint alleges multiple examples of what it describes as warped coverage of Israel and the war with Hamas.

“This lawsuit has no merit and was brought for an improper purpose,” a Times spokesperson told Mediaite. “Although it is positioned as a corporate governance petition to inspect the company’s books and records, it is a transparent attempt to exert agenda-driven pressure against an independent media organization, level false allegations of bias and chill journalism protected by the First Amendment. We will defend against the suit vigorously.”

One of top examples mentioned in the lawsuit: a photograph which ran on the paper’s front page in July 2025, showing an emaciated Gaza child which the paper said was “born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition” in its caption — suggesting the kid was starving due to the war. But the child had a preexisting health problem, which the paper didn’t mention until it added an editor’s note four days after it was published.

The lawsuit pointed to several other examples of botched coverage. Some of those are included verbatim from the lawsuit below:

• The October 17, 2023 lead headline falsely attributing the Al-Ahli Hospital explosion to an Israeli airstrike contained, by the study’s count, five errors; the Company’s first correction addressed only a mischaracterized video, and the editors’ note conceding that early coverage “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas” and “left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was” came six days after the fact, after the President and U.S. intelligence publicly attributed the blast to a Palestinian rocket.
• A November 25, 2023 claim that the rate of civilian killing in Gaza was nearly unprecedented in this century was resolved, per the study, by “erasing the paragraph” from the website “without disclosing the error or the correction.”
• A flagrantly false December 22, 2023 headline announcing that Gaza deaths surpassed “Any Arab Loss in Wars in Past 40 Years” stood for six days before correction

Yet another issue was columnist Nick Kristof’s May story claiming Palestnians had told him about “widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children,” including a shocking claim a Palestinian was “penetrated” by a dog while in Israeli custody. The piece was roundly criticized and condemned by Israel right after it published, and the whistleblower said that its publication was the result of the editorial board and fact checking department’s “failure” to do their jobs.

The whistleblower added the paper’s bias against Israel created a hostile work environment for pro-Israel Jewish employees. She said she was asked to delete Slack messages showing support for Jewish colleagues, which reinforced the paper’s “double standard on Jewish issues.”

“Yet the staffers who engaged in public advocacy on the war in favor of Palestine, which she reported through the same channels, received, so far as she is aware, no such request to edit or delete their support,” the lawsuit said. “Her desk supervisor told her that ‘it’s not your job to be the ombudsman of the New York Times,’ a position eliminated by the Company in 2017 that was never replaced. She was told that colleagues were ‘reluctant to work with’ her, and she told Human Resources, on tape, that her desk head had instructed her not to escalate concerns about bias beyond her.”

The complaint cites provisions of New York’s Business Corporation Law the plaintiffs argue gives them the right to inspect the Company’s internal books and records. They are seeking an order from the court allowing them the right to access and copy these records. The BCL also allows costs and attorneys’ fees if the plaintiffs can show their access to the records was refused in bad faith, which they argue it was in this case.

You can read the full lawsuit by clicking here.

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