David McCraw

David McCraw serves as the lead newsroom lawyer for The New York Times.  In addition to advising the newsroom on libel and other legal issues, McCraw and his team are among the nation’s most prolific litigators of freedom of information cases. The Times team has brought more than 135 FOI cases in the state and federal courts over the past 15 years, enabling Times reporters to get access documents about topics ranging from chemical weapons in Iraq and the government’s secret justification for targeted drone strikes to the mistreatment of inmates in America’s jails and the exploitation of immigrant child workers in U.S. factories. He has been at The Times for more than two decades and currently holds the position of Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel.

In 2023, McCraw and his newsroom legal team were honored with the Tony Mauro Media Lawyer Award from The American Lawyer Magazine for their advocacy on behalf of press freedom. Last year, McCraw received the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

McCraw also oversees international security for Times journalists working in high-risk areas and has served as the crisis response manager when journalists have been kidnapped or detained abroad.

In 2022, he became a co-founder of the Journalism Refugees Education Fund, a nonprofit that helps exiled media workers and their families pursue higher education in the U.S. and Canada.

McCraw is the author of the book “Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts,” a first-person account of the legal battles that helped shape The Times’s coverage of Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, national security, and the rise of political partisanship in America.

He teaches press law as a visiting faculty member at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Cornell University, and Albany Law School.