Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong told Fox News Digital why he spiked the Kamala Harris endorsement and how he’s trying to bring the paper back to the middle.
EXCLUSIVE– Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has made waves with his changes to the historically left-leaning newspaper, speaking in a new interview to Fox News Digital about why he quashed the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, how his staff is reacting to his changes and why he wants to appeal to Americans who don’t reside in the liberal echo chamber.
Soon-Shiong’s paper was attacked from the left last year after the editorial board did not endorse a presidential candidate for the first time since 2008. Soon-Shiong said he was not surprised by the backlash, which included high-profile staff resignations and the cancelation of thousands of subscriptions.
“I knew I’d get pushback. If you want to lead, you have to lead, so we took that position,” Soon-Shiong told Fox News Digital.
“Competence matters,” he added. “And, you know, did we feel as a group that she was a competent leader?”
Soon-Shiong said he did not – and has yet to – see the “prepackaged endorsement” for Harris that he scrapped, and he was not aware it had been written when the decision was made to not endorse a candidate.
“I worried [the endorsement] would actually express that she was maybe the most consequential vice president in the history of the United States, which may be the opinion of some people and may be laughed at by other people,” Soon-Shiong said.
“I thought, ‘Look, we can’t do that.’ We have to actually provide what we call factual basis for anything we’re going to actually endorse,” he added. “It doesn’t mean we don’t endorse, but that’s not the basis of how we would endorse.”
The decision came down just weeks before the 2024 election. Shortly after the LA Times, Gannett, the publishing giant that owns USA Today and hundreds of other newspapers, and the Washington Post also opted not to endorse for president last year. Like the Post, the LA Times had only ever endorsed Democrats for president.
While the Washington Post under Jeff Bezos won’t endorse presidential candidates going forward, Soon-Shiong said the LA Times has not ruled out future presidential endorsements. He said the Times plays an important role in local elections, but he didn’t want the paper to serve as an “echo chamber” for liberal readers.
“We really need to be informed, honest, transparent, truthful, so that when anybody reads that, there’s a basis for that endorsement,” he said, adding, “Somebody had to stand up and take the heat, and I did. I’ll probably still continue to take some heat. But I think it’s important.”
Soon-Shiong, an accomplished medical researcher and transplant surgeon, said he doesn’t regret the decision and feels the California wildfires have emphasized the importance of “competent leadership.” He spoke out on X earlier this month about regretting the newspaper’s backing of Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
“I really wanted to make sure that we are a trusted source for all Americans,” Soon-Shiong said. “Clearly, California is blue, very blue. When our opinion pages were so one-sided, and these are just opinions, I wanted to make sure that everybody had a chance to voice their own opinion. And more importantly, opinion based on facts, not on speculation.”
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One major change he’s made was bringing conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings on to the paper’s editorial board, which infuriated some liberal media scribes, and he’s planning to bring on more moderate and conservative voices to balance out the roster’s liberal lean.
Soon-Shiong told Fox News Digital he was sick of seeing opinions about “speculative statements” written in a way that could appear as facts to the average reader. In November, Soon-Shiong wrote about the importance of sharing different opinions to promote media trust in the wake of President Donald Trump’s victory.
Not to say it’s been easy. The LA Times has not been immune to industry headwinds, laying off 115 people last year on the heels of eight-figure financial losses in 2023.
Soon-Shiong said it’s been a “struggle” to get the staff to buy into his vision of a paper that caters to readers on both sides of the political spectrum.
“Change is difficult, right? I respect that, and I have empathy for that,” he said.
“I think the strength of our paper is going to be investigative reporting and really going after the facts on the reporting side,” Soon-Shiong added.
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He has visions to improve the outlet’s coverage by having it evolve as a media platform, and the LA Times has won plaudits for its on-the-ground reporting on the devastating fires that continue to affect the region.
To achieve his goal to be a trusted resource for all Americans means grappling with the LA Times’ historical ideological lean.
“We were and we are, if we’re honest with ourselves, the editorial team and the reporting has been left, the opinion side has been left,” he said. “Now within the news, sometimes it’s opinions scattered into the news and so that gets confusing because the news is supposedly just facts.”
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“Every American’s allowed to have a voice,” he added. “But there should be really one set of facts. And that’s the news.”
Last month, his own paper published an interview with him and reported that “many Times reporters and editors rejected the notion that they inject opinion into their news reporting, saying they long labored to be impartial arbiters.”
