David McCraw

David McCraw serves as the lead newsroom lawyer for The New York Times. He has been at The Times for more than two decades and currently holds the position of Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel.  His team provides legal counsel to Times journalists on libel, leak investigations, subpoenas for sources, access to information, and the law of newsgathering.

In 2023, Mr. McCraw and his newsroom legal team were honored with the Tony Mauro Media Lawyer Award from The American Lawyer for their advocacy on behalf of press freedom. In 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists gave him the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award.

Mr. McCraw 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. He is also 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.

In addition to advising the newsroom, Mr. McCraw is one of the nation’s most prolific litigators of Freedom of Information cases. The Times Legal Department has brought more than 130 FOI cases in the state and federal courts over the past 15 years.

He 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.

Mr. McCraw is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches a course on press law. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Cornell University, and Albany Law School.