New York Times Forced To Issue Correction After Wild Whiff On NATO

The New York Times got hit with a wave of backlash — and ultimately was forced to issue a correction — after Friday’s print edition included a headline replacing the word “Atlantic” in North Atlantic Treaty Organization with “American.”

POLITICO editor Sasha Issenburg drew attention to the flub, sharing a photo of the newspaper showing both the date and the erroneous headline, which read, “A North American Treaty Organization Without America?”

Does the @nytimes know what NATO stands for? pic.twitter.com/wvD1WxPOnN

— Sasha Issenberg (@sissenberg) April 3, 2026

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer weighed in on the paper’s mistake, noting that every headline published by The New York Times had to make it past multiple editors before going to print.

“The NYT should release the names of every editor who read this and did not correct it. They have multiple layers of editors, especially for the print publication. That’s what the NYT would demand when the government makes a bad mistake. They should live up to the same standard,” he said.

Former Trump administration official Richard Grenell pointed out that the piece’s author, Steven Erlanger, as the paper’s Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for Europe: “Yikes.”

President Trump even commented on the flub on Saturday morning, saying in a Truth Social post, “The Failing New York Times, whose lack of credibility, and their constant Fake News attacks on your favorite President, ME, has caused its circulation to absolutely PLUMMET, referred to our severely weakened and extremely unreliable “partner,”NATO, as the North American Treaty Organization. The correct name is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – A very interesting mistake! The hiring and educational standards have gone way down at the NYT. Bring back, “ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT” and, Make America Great Again!”

The article itself referenced President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to leave the organization over other nations — primarily in Europe — not providing monetary or military support when the United States is the one asking. Those threats have only accelerated as European allies have failed to answer calls for assistance with Operation Epic Fury in Iran.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been equally critical of NATO, saying in recent remarks that if the United States could not rely on NATO allies when help was needed.

“If now we have reached a point where the NATO alliance means that we can’t use those bases, that, in fact, that we can no longer use those bases to defend America’s interests, then NATO is a one-way street. Then NATO is simply about us having troops in Europe to defend Europe,” Rubio told Fox News host Sean Hannity, adding that it did not make strategic sense for the United States to remain in the organization if it was going to be so one-sided.

By Friday afternoon, the outlet issued a statement promising a correction in Saturday’s print edition: “A correction will appear in tomorrow’s print edition: ‘A headline with an article on Friday about President Trump’s threats to leave NATO misstated the full name of the body. It is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, not the North American Treaty Organization.'”