The New York Times Company reaped $47.65 million from research and development tax credits between 2021 and 2025, even as its newsroom portrayed Meta’s use of the same credit as deeply suspicious, as reported by The Free Beacon.

That inconvenient detail was absent from the Times report targeting the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Muse.ai.

The Times placed four bylines atop its article and credited two additional people with contributing research.

It also promoted the report with the rarely used “Times Exclusive” label, giving its broadside against Meta the full prestige treatment.

Its language was hardly subtle.

The report repeatedly used loaded descriptions including “lucrative,” “aggressive,” and “risky,” while characterizing Meta’s approach as “untested accounting magic.”

A bar chart credited to three Times staffers claimed to illustrate “How Meta’s research tax credits have exploded in recent years.”

Information about the Times Company’s own benefits from those credits instead appeared in the fine print of its Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Reader comments showed plenty of hostility toward Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The article itself began with the words “Mark Zuckerberg,” setting the target immediately.

One comment receiving “Reader Pick” recognition after 795 upvotes declared, “Absolute corrupt use of accounting and legal tricks. That's why Trump loves Zuckerberg.”

Another selected comment said, “Meta is able to confidently make this bet because of who is in office and their ability to buy him.”

The Times report also emphasized Meta’s disclosures about tax-related risks.

Yet the New York Times Company includes comparable disclosures in its own SEC filings, raising an obvious question about why similar practices received sharply different treatment.

The company’s 2025 Form 10-K listed more than $78 million in “other liabilities.”

According to the filing, that amount primarily included “self-insurance liabilities, post-employment liabilities, and ‘contingent tax liability for uncertain tax positions.’”

When discussing Meta, however, the Times asserted, “Meta's own accountants recognize that the strategy is on shaky legal ground.”

It added that billions in tax savings could be overturned by the Internal Revenue Service, citing “uncertainties with our research tax credits.”

The Times has not always treated the research and development credit like some sinister accounting spell.

Its opinion pages previously presented the credit as a tool that could support American competitiveness and attract bipartisan backing.

A 2010 Thomas Friedman column discussed an argument from Intel chief executive Paul Otellini for increasing the research and development tax credit by 5% while lowering corporate taxes.

The column was titled “A Word From the Wise.”

A 2007 Times blog post by Bruce Bartlett also mentioned making the credit permanent.

Bartlett cited a proposal from Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chaired the Finance Committee, as part of a possible package with bipartisan support.

The Times maintains a webpage devoted to its own research, development, and experimentation efforts.

That page links to posts on Medium describing technology projects undertaken by the company, including one titled “Designing a Digital New York Times Museum.”

That museum project involved a Times team “tasked with designing a proof-of-concept that brings the internal company museum in the NYC office to remote employees.”

The project account explained, “We want to reduce the cognitive load for visitors and prominent artifacts so visitors are not overwhelmed when they enter the virtual museum.”

The Free Beacon contacted the four Times reporters and asked how Meta’s credit use differed from the Times Company’s own practices.

The inquiry specifically noted the Times Company’s credits and projects involving remote employee access to a virtual museum.

Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander defended the report.

He said, “The Times' reporting on Meta's claiming of billions in tax credits is based on interviews with multiple people familiar with Meta's operations, tax credit experts, and citations of Meta's own securities filings that clearly outline the billions of dollars in risk these claims introduce.”

Stadtlander continued, “Incisive and revealing journalism like this performs a vital role in helping the public understand how one of the largest companies shaping the economy conducts itself.”

He concluded, “The Times is confident that our approach to R&E credits is appropriate.”

That response leaves the central contrast intact.

The Times framed Meta’s approach with alarmist language while maintaining that its own use of the same research and experimentation credits was entirely appropriate.

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