After President-elect Donald J. Trump announced a cascade of cabinet picks last month, the editorial board of The Los Angeles Times decided it would weigh in. One writer prepared an editorial arguing that the Senate should follow its traditional process for confirming nominees, particularly given the board’s concerns about some of his picks, and ignore Mr. Trump’s call for so-called recess appointments.
The paper’s owner, the billionaire medical entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, had other ideas.
Hours before the editorial was set to be sent to the printer for the next day’s newspaper, Dr. Soon-Shiong told the opinion department’s leaders that the editorial could not be published unless the paper also published an editorial with an opposing view.
Baffled by his order and with the print deadline approaching, editors removed the editorial, headlined “Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should be.” It never ran.
Dr. Soon-Shiong’s intervention, recounted by four people inside The Times who would speak only anonymously, is one of a string of events in which he has waded into the publication’s opinion section in ways that he hadn’t until this fall’s presidential campaign. Shortly before the presidential election, Dr. Soon-Shiong quashed the editorial board’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Multiple staff members quit in protest. He has also said publicly that the outlet needs more balance and that he wants to introduce a “bias meter” alongside coverage.
As the owner of The Times, Dr. Soon-Shiong can shape the publication as he wants. He has not recently weighed in on coverage in the newsroom, according to a top editor, which operates separately from the opinion section. Both departments are overseen by the same executive editor, Terry Tang.
But Dr. Soon-Shiong’s public comments and actions have concerned many staff members who fear he is trying to be deferential to the incoming Trump administration. The call to have dueling editorials has also confounded many of its seasoned journalists, who know editorials as the institution’s position on issues.
On Wednesday, he said in a statement that the full-time staff positions on the editorial board were under review, and that Scott Jennings, a prominent conservative commentator, had accepted a position on the board. A person with knowledge of the arrangement said that Mr. Jennings would be a contributor, not a member of the staff.
“The L.A. Times editorial board is undergoing a transformation to include critical thinkers representing diverse perspectives across the political spectrum,” Dr. Soon-Shiong said in the statement. A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment on the editorial about Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks.
Dr. Soon-Shiong, who made his fortune through pharmaceuticals, bought The Times and its sister publication in 2018 for $500 million. He has become increasingly involved in the editorial decisions of the newspaper. He clashed with Kevin Merida, the executive editor he appointed in 2021, leading to Mr. Merida’s departure in January. Mr. Merida’s exit was partly over an episode in December 2023 in which Dr. Soon-Shiong tried to pressure him to stop a reporter from pursuing a story about one of Dr. Soon-Shiong’s wealthy acquaintances.
Dr. Soon-Shiong’s involvement in the opinion side of the newspaper picked up sharply during this year’s presidential campaign. In October, he abruptly vetoed the editorial board’s endorsement of Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee. Four members of the board quit in protest, leaving three remaining, including Ms. Tang. A number of writers in the opinion section also departed.
One of the people who quit in protest, Mariel Garza, said in an interview with The Columbia Journalism Review that she was “not OK with us being silent” about Mr. Trump. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up,” she said. “This is how I’m standing up.”
Dr. Soon-Shiong has done a number of interviews recently criticizing his newspaper’s editorial stance. On Nov. 15, he said in a social media post that he needed to “rebirth the organization and allow dissenting views and ALL voices to be expressed.” In a Dec. 4 episode of Mr. Jennings’s podcast, “Flyover Country,” Dr. Soon-Shiong explained that he had begun to see his newspaper as “an echo chamber and not a trusted source” and that he planned to introduce a “bias meter” on articles using augmented intelligence technology.
The comments elicited pushback from the L.A. Times Guild, which represents journalists at the paper. It said in a statement that Dr. Soon-Shiong’s comments about the publication represented his own opinions “and do not shape reporting by our member journalists.”
“The newspaper’s owner has publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples,” the statement said.
The Times editorial that was critical of Mr. Trump’s effort to pursue recess appointments had been scheduled to publish in the Sunday newspaper and on its website on Nov. 24.
In addition to saying that the Senate should follow its traditional process, the editorial criticized several of Mr. Trump’s picks as being unfit for the roles he planned to install them into, including the Fox News host Pete Hegseth and the former presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When Dr. Soon-Shiong weighed in, effectively killing the editorial, editors rushed to fill the hole in the newspaper, landing instead on an opinion article that had already been written by Karin Klein, a departing editorial board member, that was more sympathetic to Mr. Trump. It appeared in print with the headline: “Trump has a chance to be a true education president.”
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