Courtesy: Web Summit
Chairman and Publisher AG Sulzberger spoke on center stage at this year’s Web Summit in Portugal, focusing on how The Times is responding to rising threats against the press.
In a conversation with NPR CEO Katherine Maher, Sulzberger described a dramatic trend of aspiring strongmen who take aggressive efforts to curtail and punish independent journalism. In his 2024 essay, Sulzberger identified countries where leaders have developed a clear, systematic anti-press playbook that’s now being deployed in the United States.
That playbook has five core elements:
- Sow distrust in reporting and normalize the harassment of reporters.
- Manipulate legal and regulatory authority — such as taxation, immigration enforcement and privacy protections — to punish reporters and news organizations.
- Exploit the courts to impose logistical and financial penalties on reporting, even in cases without legal merit.
- Increase the scale of attacks on reporters and news organizations by encouraging powerful supporters to adopt versions of these tactics.
- Use the levers of power to reward those who demonstrate fealty to their leadership. This includes helping supporters of the ruling party gain control of news organizations financially weakened by these efforts.
Courtesy: Web Summit
The Times’s Response: Keep Doing the Work
The Times is responding to these pressures by remaining committed to its mission of independent journalism, ensuring its reporting remains impartial. Sulzberger said The Times will continue to ask tough questions and provide the information the public needs — “fully, fairly and independently.”
Being independent means Times reporters start every story with an open mind and empty notebook and follow the facts wherever they lead. The Times fully and fairly examines the most debated issues from all perspectives and holds powerful people and institutions accountable, no matter their party or ideology — from questions about President Biden’s age and fitness for office to how Trump’s family is profiting from his presidency.
In its reporting on President Donald Trump over the last decade, The Times has produced “the single biggest body of accountability journalism ever produced by a single news organization on a single subject,” Sulzberger said.
The most important response to the pressure on the free press, Sulzberger said, is to “keep doing the work. Keep reporting, keep asking questions, keep bringing what you find to the public.”
Commitment to Independence
On Trump’s $15 billion lawsuit against The Times, Sulzberger said the organization is “completely confident in the journalism and we are completely confident in the law and we’re going to win the lawsuit.”
“Your rights only hold if you fight for them,” Sulzberger said, emphasizing that the rights protecting The Times are the same rights that protect all media organizations in the United States. “It is in all of our interests to come together.”
Sulzberger argued the press must do a “better job explaining why journalism matters in society,” recognizing that a free press is a central pillar in democracy. As society grapples with polarization and distrust, he stressed that journalists must actively make the case for why people should care about reporting. Reporting is what provides the public with reliable information needed to make informed decisions.
“It’s not just the press’s ability to operate, it’s the public’s right to know,” he said. “It’s an essential part of a healthy democracy.”
