Staffers at the Los Angeles Times say the newspaper’s billionaire owner is demanding that the editorial board “take a break from writing about” President-elect Donald Trump, according to a report.
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the physician and entrepreneur who bought the Times in 2018, has rankled staffers at the paper with his “meddling” in editorial matters, which has become “more pervasive than previously realized,” media reporter Oliver Darcy writes in his Status newsletter.
The South Africa-𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 Soon-Shiong is reported to have taken “a number of previously unreported steps” designed to rein in Trump-related commentary.
Last week, the New York Times reported that Soon-Shiong blocked his newspaper from publishing an editorial that argued the Senate should follow its traditional process for confirming cabinet picks rather than allow Trump to make recess appointments.
The editorial, which bore the headline “Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should be,” did not run, according to the New York Times.
But Soon-Shiong’s hands-on involvement in the editorial decisions of his newspaper has been “much broader in scope” than spiking the op-ed, according to Status.
Terry Tang, executive editor of the LA Times, received a memo signed by “several members” of the opinion section who accuse their boss of having “instituted a new policy that prohibits editorials containing criticism of the president-elect unless they are presented side-by-side with another opinion piece representing the ‘opposing view,’” Darcy wrote in his newsletter.
“This new restriction, which appears to apply only to matters involving Trump and not to other officials or issues, has effectively 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ed or indefinitely delayed multiple editorials that have been written and edited but remain unpublished,” according to the memo.
Soon-Shiong has also reportedly “required” the editorial board to email him “the text of every editorial and the name of its writer” ahead of publication — a move that staffers said raised “concerns about the ability of the board to do its job without fear of retaliation.”
“Editorial board positions and content have been preemptively censored before publication, and its arguments, headlines and topics subjected to boundaries that did not previously exist,” the memo said.
An LA Times spokesperson told Status: “Our management team is currently reviewing the concerns expressed in the letter.”
Earlier this month, Soon-Shiong revealed that he has been working “behind the scenes” to create a “bias meter” for every article published by the newspaper.
Soon-Shiong’s pivot prompted Harry Litman, a longtime senior legal columnist for the paper, to resign in protest. He accused the owner of “currying favor” with Trump in a “shameful capitulation.”
Soon-Shiong made the announcement at around the same time he confirmed the hiring of conservative commentator Scott Jennings to serve on the newspaper editorial board.
Soon-Shiong first vowed to even out the paper’s left-leaning political slant in November.
“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,” he said.
His pledge came despite fervent backlash the month before when he blocked the Times’ editorial board from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.
Thousands of readers canceled their subscriptions and urged others to boycott the company on social media. Several outraged members of the editorial board resigned.