The Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked his newspaper from endorsing Vice President Harris to protest her support of Israel’s war in Gaza, his daughter reveled on Saturday.
Nika Soon-Shiong, a 31-year-old far-left political activist, has been accused in the past of having undo influence at the paper, where she has no formal role.
“Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process,” the younger Soon-Shiong said in a statement to the The New York Times.
She then falsely accused Israel of committing “genocide.”
“As a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.”
Nika Soon-Shiong’s allegations echo pro-Hamas campus activists who have dogged both President Biden and Vice President Harris on the campaign trail.
Earlier this month Harris appeared to agree with a heckler who accused Israel of committing “genocide,” which her campaign later denied.
In an interview with his own newspaper, Patrick Soon-Shiong was more circumspect, claiming the decision was not a result of any single issue.
“The process was [to decide]: how do we actually best inform our readers? And there could be nobody better than us who try to sift the facts from fiction” while leaving it to readers to make their own final decision, he told the Los Angeles Times.
Just days after the LA Times decision, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post also withheld that paper’s planned endorsement of Harris.
The decisions precipitated full-scale meltdowns in both newsrooms.