USA · Bias: Liberal
Sulzberger family (NYT Co.)
America's self-styled "paper of record" has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other news organization, well over 130 of them. That includes the Pentagon Papers in 1971, when the Nixon administration tried to stop publication and lost at the Supreme Court in one of the most important First Amendment rulings ever. That legacy took a serious hit in 2003, when reporter Jayson Blair was found to have made up and copied material in dozens of stories. An internal review found problems in 36 of his last 73 articles, and the paper's top two editors resigned. Its newest fight is with the sitting president. In September 2025, Donald Trump sued the Times, three of its reporters and Penguin Random House for $15 billion, claiming defamation. A federal judge in Florida threw out the first complaint within days for being too long, let Trump file again, and in July 2026 told him to amend it once more. A 62-page amended complaint followed in late August 2026 (Forbes, 27 July 2026; GV Wire, 28 August 2026). The Times says it will fight the case. OWNERSHIP AS OF SEPTEMBER 2026 Short answer to "who owns the New York Times": The New York Times Company. It's listed on the New York Stock Exchange, but it's controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, which has run the paper since 1896. How that works: the company has two kinds of shares. Anyone can buy Class A shares. Class B shares, most of them held through a family trust, elect about 70% of the board (company proxy filing, March 2026). So outside investors can own a big slice of the company without being able to take it over. And no, it's not owned by Jeff Bezos. He owns The Washington Post, a different paper. A.G. Sulzberger, the fifth generation of the family to lead the paper, has been publisher since 2018 and chairman since January 2021. Meredith Kopit Levien has been chief executive since September 2020 (company announcement, July 2020). Joseph Kahn has been executive editor, the top newsroom job, since June 2022. IS THE NEW YORK TIMES LEFT OR RIGHT? Our reading: centre-left, and its opinion pages lean clearly liberal. But the news pages are more interesting than that label. When we read Times headlines, the problem we find most often isn't a leftward tilt. It's politeness toward whoever holds power. Eight dated examples from our archive, good and bad: On 16 September 2026, most outlets led the Kennedy Center story with Trump's name fight. The Times went with "Kennedy Center Closes Its Doors Despite a Judge's Order," the part that actually mattered, and still gave the center's side. We praised it. On 7 September 2026, the president posted a map crossing out "Mexico" in New Mexico, after a satire account's fake order had already been debunked. The Times headline said he posted a map "Suggesting" a rename. In our reading, "suggesting" made it sound like a policy idea. On 4 September 2026, two days after we asked who had "assigned" Venezuelan oil to Chevron, the Times ran "The U.S. Wants the Oil From These 17 Venezuelan Fields." Named, counted, clear. Praise. On 2 September 2026, a judge ruled Google would not have to break up its ad business after being found to have illegally monopolized it. The Times headline opened with "In a Big Win." That's accurate for Google, but AP led with the judge ordering changes, which we thought was the fairer frame. On 22 August 2026, five deportees who had court rulings saying they risked harm at home refused to get off a plane in Liberia and were flown on to Equatorial Guinea. The Times headline said they "Resist Deplaning," which we thought was an airline word for a far heavier moment. On 16 August 2026, the Times traced how a made-up quote from an Iranian commander travelled from an anonymous account to Washington. A careful, useful piece. Praise. On 9 August 2026, Israel rejected a 15-point Gaza plan that asked Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw. The Times headline called it a plan "to Disarm Hamas." Its own summary line mentioned the withdrawal half, the part the deal broke down over. The Washington Post fit both halves in. On 28 July 2026, Senator Rand Paul published what he said was Anthony Fauci's diary, days before a hearing Paul chairs. The Times headline, "Fauci, in Private Diary, Reflected on Covid's Origins and His Own Fame," didn't mention who released it. NPR's did. IS THE NEW YORK TIMES RELIABLE? CAN YOU CITE IT? Yes. It's one of the most cited newspapers in the world, and teachers and Wikipedia editors generally accept it. Just keep news and opinion apart: a column is one writer's view, not the paper's reporting. The US has no press regulator like Britain's IPSO or Ofcom, so there are no official rulings to point to. What the Times does have is a public corrections page and a habit of editors' notes when it gets something big wrong. The best-known recent one came in October 2023, after the blast at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. The Times said its early coverage "relied too heavily on claims by Hamas" and didn't make clear those claims couldn't be checked yet (Times of Israel, 23 October 2023). To be straight about our own standing: everything here is our reading, not a scientific score. We don't rate outlets on a scale. We read one story at a time and show our working. WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY ASK Who owns the New York Times? The New York Times Company, controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family through special voting shares. Chairman and publisher: A.G. Sulzberger. Does Jeff Bezos own the New York Times? No. Bezos owns The Washington Post. Is the New York Times liberal or conservative? Liberal on its opinion pages. Centre-left overall, in our reading, with news headlines that are often cautious rather than combative. Is the New York Times a reliable source? Generally yes for facts, and it publishes corrections. Read past the headline, and check whether you're reading news or opinion. Is the New York Times free? Mostly no. A few articles are free, but most need a subscription. WHAT CHANGED Last reviewed 25 September 2026: added the ownership section (family control, CEO and editor), an update on Trump's lawsuit, the al-Ahli editors' note, real reader questions, and eight dated examples from our archive. We also corrected our 1619 Project summary below: the Times did publish an update note in March 2020.
In 2019, the Times launched the 1619 Project, an ambitious effort led by Nikole Hannah-Jones to reframe American history around the date the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia rather than 1776. The goal was to center slavery's legacy in the national story in a way mainstream history rarely had. Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for the project's lead essay in 2020, but a group of prominent historians, including Pulitzer winners Gordon Wood and James McPherson, publicly objected that a central claim, that protecting slavery was a primary motivation for the American Revolution, wasn't supported by the evidence. In March 2020 the Times changed the line to say this was a motivation for "some of the colonists" and published an update from magazine editor Jake Silverstein explaining the change. Later that year, critics, including the Times' own columnist Bret Stephens, pointed out that other wording about 1619 as the country's "true founding" had been removed from the online version without a note. Hannah-Jones answered that the "true founding" idea had always been a metaphor. That second change is what fed the argument that the paper revised quietly instead of openly.