The New York Times is facing two pressure points at once: a costly copyright battle with AI companies and a political fight over the ability of reporters to do sensitive work without intimidation.
In a late July interview at WIRED’s offices, publisher A.G. Sulzberger described both conflicts as part of the same larger question: whether journalism can keep serving the public when powerful institutions want either its work product or its silence.
A costly fight over AI and journalism
The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft nearly three years ago, accusing the companies of copyright infringement and alleging that New York Times journalism was illegally used to train AI models. The case is still active, with motions continuing around discovery requests.
For most businesses, spending upwards of $20 million on one legal fight with no guaranteed result would demand a difficult explanation. Sulzberger’s answer is that the spending is the cost of defending journalism at the Times and beyond it.
The concern is not only about one publisher’s archive. The interview frames the lawsuit as part of a wider fight over how AI companies are changing the way people search for, receive, and consume information online. Sulzberger’s argument is that AI products may depend on the kind of reporting they could also weaken.
That makes the lawsuit more than a dispute over licensing or compensation. It is also a test of whether news organizations can protect the value of original reporting when new systems are built around large-scale information use.
A strong business with serious risks
The Times is not presented as a fragile company. The source notes that it has recently surpassed 13 million subscribers and that its newsroom is widely viewed by journalists as one of the most stable and well-resourced in the business.
That strength matters because it gives the Times room to fight. But Sulzberger’s point is that even a strong institution can face existential pressure when its reporting, legal rights, and distribution channels are all under strain at the same time.
The issues he identifies fall into a few connected categories:
- AI companies changing how people find information online.
- Products that may rely on journalism while reducing the business value of that journalism.
- An administration willing to target reporters over coverage it dislikes.
- Media companies facing damage from shifts on the open web.
For smaller newsrooms, the implications are even sharper. If the most stable and well-resourced news organizations see these conflicts as urgent, the pressure on less protected publishers is likely to feel more immediate.
The subpoenas over Air Force One reporting
The interview also focused on subpoenas issued by the Justice Department to several Times journalists. The subpoenas related to their reporting on a jet gifted by Qatar to the Trump administration for use as Air Force One. The Justice Department also issued subpoenas to third-party phone service providers seeking text messages and phone calls between some journalists and their family members.
Sulzberger called the episode a disturbing escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts against the free press. He said reporters were working under a level of pressure not seen in generations, and described the broader effort as the biggest from a White House probably since Woodrow Wilson, so in more than a century.
The reporting at issue concerned the Qatari-donated jet, which Sulzberger said was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He noted that it was unclear whether the donation was to the Trump administration or to Trump himself.
According to Sulzberger, questions had been raised about whether the jet could be secure enough to carry the President of the United States around the world. Times reporters found that on one of its inaugural trips, its first trip overseas to Turkey, there were concerns that it was insufficiently equipped to respond to a threat, and the president had to return on the original Air Force One. Sulzberger said the president initially denied this and that the truth was later confirmed.
Why enforcement matters
Sulzberger emphasized that upsetting presidents of either party is not new for the Times. What he described as unusual was the speed and manner of the subpoenas. He said the administration defied its own standards, practices, and explicit guidelines, moved in the course of a day or two, and served reporters at their homes.
He also pointed to the attempt to obtain records not only from reporters but from members of their families. In his view, that moved the episode beyond routine legal conflict and into intimidation.
Asked how unusual such actions were, Sulzberger called them extremely rare. He compared the closest example during his tenure to the first Trump administration, when some Times reporter records were secretly seized by the Justice Department. He said that incident helped lead to reforms aimed at limiting that type of abuse.
He also referenced a Washington Post case some months ago in which a reporter’s home was raided and devices were seized. To him, these incidents fit into a broader pattern.
The industry response
Sulzberger rejected the idea that the media industry has largely capitulated. He said he believes the industry has mostly held its ground, while defining that stance carefully. Holding ground, in his view, does not require adopting an adversarial posture. It means publishing the truth even when powerful people are angered by it.
He cited WIRED, The Wall Street Journal, and The Associated Press as examples of organizations doing strong work. He also noted that The Associated Press sued after the White House conditioned continued access on changing how it referred to a large body of water from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The core message is simple: rights do not protect themselves. Sulzberger said he regularly tells peers in the industry that rights only hold if news organizations seek to enforce them.
That principle links the Times’ AI lawsuit with its response to government pressure. In both cases, the institution is choosing to fight even when the outcome is uncertain. For Sulzberger, the alternative is allowing the rules around journalism to be rewritten by those with more power and less interest in independent reporting.