The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times gave a bizarre defense for his plans to overhaul the “very left” editorial board after he blocked it from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong said Harris’ support for Israel’s military actions in Gaza was one of the main reasons he refused to endorse the Democrat and said he wants to hire more conservative voices — an odd view considering that the majority of conservatives back the Jewish state’s war against Hamas terrorists.
Nevertheless, Soon-Shiong insisted he was seeking a better “balance” after vowing to replace the remaining members of the editorial board who did not quit after he killed the endorsement for Harris..
“If we were honest with ourselves, our current board of opinion writers veered very left, which is fine, but I think in order to have balance, you also need to have somebody who would trend right, and more importantly, somebody that would trend in the middle,” Soon-Shiong said.
Last month, he blocked his editorial board from publishing its endorsement of Harris — instead suggesting that it print two side-by-side analysis pieces that included the pros and cons of electing either the Democrat or Republican Donald Trump, who ended up winning decisively.
Thousands canceled their subscriptions in protest and several members of the editorial board resigned.
The publication has a combined print and digital audience of 4.4 million subscribers, according to the analytics firm Meltwater.
Soon-Shiong wrote on X earlier this week that he plans to make his newspaper “fair and balanced so that all voices are heard and we can respectfully exchange every America’s view…from left to right to the center.”
“Coming soon. A new Editorial Board. Trust in media is critical for a strong democracy,” Soon-Shiong wrote on X.
Soon-Shiong, who bought the Times in 2018 for $500 million, told CNN that his plan to revamp the editorial board is “not as inflammatory as you’re firing everybody.” Instead, he said he was “really trying to identify voices that speak to all the Americans.”
He told CNN that the publication needs to make a clearer distinction between its hard news coverage and the opinion and editorial sections.
“Somebody just picking up the paper, Gen Z today or something, I don’t know would recognize that that is an opinion,” he said.
“This conflation of news and opinion of the news sometimes gets all mixed up, and I think that’s part of the problem of why there’s a reduction in trust of the press.”
Last week, the independent site Drop Site News reported that Patrick Soon-Shiong circulated an internal email at the LA Times saying that the Israel-Gaza conflict and the administration’s policies were one of the reasons for his decision not to endorse a candidate.
“Has there ever been a time in our history when our nation is knowingly providing arms to another nation using those weapons to kill children, women, innocent people and target the press, doctors and medical workers? And policies enabling this are supported it seems by both candidates?” he wrote in the email to employees.
The memo followed a New York Times report that his daughter Nika Soon-Shiong, 31, said that the family “made the joint decision not to endorse” a candidate because of the Biden-Harris administration’s “openly financing genocide” in Gaza.
She cited her father’s upbringing in his native South Africa during the apartheid era, writing on X: “The temptation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue the international courts have called a plausible genocide. But this moment requires opposition to crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and Apartheid – as my parents did in South Africa.”
Patrick Soon-Shiong released a statement shortly after the Times published its article, saying that Nika Soon-Shiong “speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion.”
“She does not have any role at The LA Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times,” the newspaper’s owner said in the statement.
The dad later confirmed an earlier report which said that Harris’ support for the administration’s policies on Israel and its war in Gaza played a role in his decision not to endorse a candidate.
“Somebody had asked me, ‘Was that the reason?’ I said, ‘Well, that wasn’t the only reason.’ Clearly, that was one of the reasons, and there are many other reasons, but I think that should be exposed really transparently about all the reasons,” he told CNN.
The Post has sought comment from the LA Times.
Soon-Shiong’s intervention mirrored that of Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post owner who also prevented his newspaper’s editorial board from endorsing Harris.
Bezos’ move prompted some 250,000 readers of the newspaper to cancel their subscriptions.