The National Center for Public Policy Research, a beneficial shareholder of the New York Times Company, is demanding that the publication turn over documents tied to its publication of a New York Times opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof that accused Israeli authorities of training dogs to sexually assault Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Mark Goldfeder, director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, which sent a letter to the company on behalf of the Times shareholder, said that the demand is meant to investigate whether the Times bypassed its corporate governance and risk oversight policies when it published Kristof’s May 11 column and a May 21 follow-up column.
The letter, which JNS viewed, states that the stockholder’s demand is in line with state law, which allows shareholders to inspect “certain books and records under the company’s control.”
The shareholder wants to know “whether the Times’ board and senior management are properly overseeing legal, reputational and financial risks tied to the company’s publication practices,” Goldfeder told JNS.
“The demand is not about second-guessing ordinary editorial judgment or seeking reporter notes, drafts, confidential sources or internal editorial deliberations,” he said. “It is focused on corporate governance and risk oversight: what systems the company has for verification, corrections, defamation-risk review, escalation of disputed reporting and preventing distorted or biased coverage.”
“The request specifically asks whether those policies were followed, triggered, waived or bypassed in connection with Nicholas Kristof’s column, ‘The Silence that Meets the Rape of Palestinians,’ and whether senior management or the board reviewed any legal, reputational, source-reliability, correction or standards issues arising from that publication,” Goldfeder told JNS.
The Times tells investors that “its brand, reputation, journalistic reliability and public trust are central business assets and that perceptions of bias or unreliability can affect subscribers, advertisers, employees, litigation risk and shareholder value,” he said.
The National Center for Public Policy Research is also asking for records “showing whether the board is actually monitoring those risks, including complaints, subscriber or advertiser reactions, threatened litigation, correction demands, internal studies and any board- or senior-management-level review of disputed coverage,” according to Goldfeder.
The four-page letter requests that the company contact Goldfeder to make arrangements “for the review of the demanded books and records.”
“In the event that the company does not respond to this letter or fails to permit inspection and copying of the demanded documents within five business days from the receipt of this demand, we will seek appropriate relief to the fullest extent permitted under the law,” the letter states.
