Viewpoint: The Controversy Behind the Scenes of LA Times Refusing to Endorse Harris

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(Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the Westside Current on October 27, 2024, and is reprinted with permission.)

L.A. Times Owner Patrick Soon-Shiong

By ANGELA MCGREGOR

For a few years now, accusations have flown that L.A.’s paper of record, contrary to accepted journalistic standards, has been used as a mouthpiece for its owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and his daughter, Nika.

In 2022, L.A. Magazine published a scathing piece accusing Nika (a police abolitionist and pro-Palestinian advocate) of being the “Ivanka of the L.A. Times”.

Around the same time, Politico published an in-depth piece on the inner workings of the paper, with one staffer quoted as saying, “It’s hard to know where Nika starts and the paper stops.”

In response, both Soon-Shiongs vehemently denied that they were anything but “informal advisors” to the paper’s Pulitzer-winning staff, despite some startling (and apparently poorly researched ) endorsements in L.A.’s 2022 local elections that appeared to indicate otherwise.

This year, reporting from The Wrap indicated that Dr. Soon-Shiong had “pulled more newsroom strings” at the paper, including quashing a story about a dog bite debacle involving one of his good friends, an action which contributed to the resignation of the Times’ Editor in Chief, Kevin Merida (ultimately, the story was published, initially without a byline).

Recent revelations that both Soon-Shiongs prevented the Times from endorsing Kamala Harris in this year’s Presidential election put the lie to their previous claims that they had never interfered with the paper’s reporting.

On October 25, the L.A. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists issued a statement imploring Soon-Shiong “to reconsider and reverse his decision to forego a Times presidential endorsement…Editorial endorsements and ballot recommendations…are a profound statement of institutional values, and in that light, this decision speaks volumes, and not in a good way.”

But on the same day, Soon-Shiong told the Times, “I have no regrets whatsoever. In fact, I think it was exactly the right decision.”

The implication of all of this is that if you’re reading the L.A. Times for anything other than to find out what a South African bio-tech billionaire and his cosplaying Socialist daughter would like you to know, you might want to look elsewhere.

As Karen Klein, a Times (now former) Editorial Board member, stated on Facebook while announcing her resignation, “The Board was not the one choosing to remain silent.  He blocked our voice.  He can force his decisions down everyone’s throats.”

In her resignation letter, Marial Garza, the Times former editorials editor stated, “The non-endorsement undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion or through a decree by the owner.”

Dr. Soon-Shiong tweeted that the Editorial Staff was “provided the opportunity” (presumably by him) to present a “factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House” and to then publish some sort of voter guide.  Klein called it a “chickenshit attempt to throw editorialists under the bus.”

Nika Soon-Shiong has been refreshingly forthcoming in stating how she – a 31 year old graduate student with no professional editorial training – was instrumental in a decision which, to date, has resulted in the resignations of three editors (one a Pulitzer prize winner) and thousands of subscription cancellations.

She tweeted that the decision not to endorse Harris was due to the “genocide” and “apartheid” in Israel, for which she believes Harris should be held responsible, even though the Vice President’s opponent in the race recently told CSPAN that he has been on the phone with Bibi Netanyahu frequently, and was glad that Israel “didn’t listen to Biden” when it came to their actions in Gaza.

Nika Soon-Shiong is the daughter of L.A. Times owner Patrick.
Photo: Instagram

In her tweets, Nika stated that her father shared her views, and took apartheid very seriously because he had been an emergency surgeon at a Soweto hospital during the uprisings of 1976.  To further underscore her role, she told the New York Times, “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.

Nika’s tweets and the NY Times article about them resulted in a long, scathing series of replies, including from many of her fellow, now disillusioned, progressive allies.

During a particularly brutal ratio, Nika was repeatedly condemned as a “nepo baby,” shamelessly invoking the suffering in Gaza to justify her father’s pandering to Trump. Actress and playwright Maya Contreras received 2,300 likes and over 570 retweets for the following response: “Bullshit. Your dad is a billionaire who blocked the @latimes from endorsing Kamala Harris to appease Trump and his BFFs Elon Musk.

You’re grotesque for using the innocent deaths of civilians to support your dad’s fascism and his support of a fascist regime that’ll end Gaza.”   Rebecca Schoenkopf, the proprietress of Wonkette (who tweets under the handle @commiegirl), responded with a whole thread that included, “It’s really crazy how a supposed progressive would lie to all our faces like this. I’m super grossed out. You “trust the editorial board”? They endorsed her. Your dad canned it. And you’re using your progressive cred to literally lie. Yuck. You should be ashamed.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough for poor (little rich girl) Nika, in a move straight out of Succession, Dr. Soon-Shiong’s spokesperson issued the following statement to the Times: “Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion, as every community member has the right to do. She does not have any role at The L.A. Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times.”

Apparently, when it comes to perpetrating the official story — that the endorsement was made with the Editorial Board’s participation, and that they had “chosen to remain silent” – Soon-Shiong has no compunctions about destroying his only daughter’s reputation and credibility.

It turns out that Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has very good reasons to be angry with Harris, which have nothing to do with apartheid.

In 2017, Soon-Shiong purchased a controlling stake in the hedge fund that had owned Verity Health Systems since 2015, promising “the highest level of care with the best outcomes at the lowest cost for all Californians.”  The purchase included six hospitals, one of which was the St. Vincent Medical Center, in the Westlake District, which had been providing essential care to its mainly poor and working-class neighborhood since 1869.

When the hedge fund acquired Verity Health, then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris, according to Politico, “stipulated the system had to deliver tens of millions in charity care, with the exact amount fluctuating based on the inflation rate and other factors”, and at the time of Soon-Shiong’s acquisition, that agreement still stood.

But a 2017 policy agreement for the hospital issued by Soon-Shiong titled “Financial Assistance Policy”, enumerating the terms under which low-income patients would receive discounted care, included dozens of hospital departments exempted from serving such services, including anesthesiology, neo-natal intensive care, pediatrics and oncology.  By 2018, hospital spending on charity care had decreased by 28 percent.

Despite the hospitals’ dilapidated conditions, Soon-Shiong put the lion’s share of his investment into upgrading Verity’s IT system, specifically a contract with a health IT vendor called Allscripts, in which Soon-Shiong had a financial stake.

In August 2018, Verity Health declared bankruptcy, and in January, 2020, they closed St. Vincent’s Medical Center.  Soon-Shiong then purchased St. Vincent’s in April, 2020 for $135 million, briefly opened it to provide overflow care for Covid patients during the pandemic, then closed it again.

To date, it remains shuttered despite mounting calls for Soon-Shiong to reopen it.

Around the same time Verity went bankrupt, Soon-Shiong was reported to be in talks with then-President Trump to take over the nation’s entire healthcare system, as the country’s “healthcare czar,” tasked with “solving healthcare.”

Harris’s crackdowns on hospital mergers were a feature of her tenure as Attorney General.

According to recent reporting in the Kentucky Lantern, “she was concerned that mergers among hospitals, physician groups, and health insurers could thwart competition and lead to higher prices for patients” and will likely seek to further scrutinize and regulate such consolidation should she win the election.

Is it any wonder, then, that Soon-Schiong dreads a possible Harris administration and is doing what he can to prevent one?  After all, who among us, if we owned a trusted local institution like the 144-year-old L.A. Times, wouldn’t use it to protect our friends, promote our fringe political beliefs, wreak revenge against old business opponents, or curry favor with powerful political allies?

The problem is that, when billionaires – out of hubris or greed — decide to throw around their outsized economic power, the consequences can be dire.   Hospitals close.  Newspapers fall apart.  Journalistic standards and editorial transparency go by the wayside at a time when the country needs them more than ever.

For what it’s worth, I won’t be cancelling my subscription to the L.A. Times.  After all, I’ve been reading it for most of my life, going back to when it was owned by another wealthy Los Angeles family, who put a decidedly conservative stamp on its reporting during their multiple generations of control.

Over the decades, the Times has provided stellar coverage of riots, earthquakes and local politics.  Most recently, Steve Lopez’s reporting on the dire conditions at MacArthur Park has been essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the impact the homelessness crisis has on local businesses.

Perhaps at some point this vital, albeit financially challenged, local institution will find a new way forward.  Ideally, without relying on a billionaire just as greedy, flawed and assured of their own superiority as anyone else.

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