Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong on Friday said it has been a “struggle” to get his newsroom to buy into a more balanced ideological approach in the months after he canceled the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.
“Change is difficult, right? I respect that, and I have empathy for that,” the billionaire told Fox News Digital.
A handful of employees ditched the LA Times after Soon-Shiong nixed the editorial board’s plan to endorse Harris against Donald Trump in the 2024 election. One editorial writer who quit even called him a “chickens—t” who threw the editorial team “under the bus.”
On Friday, Soon-Shiong said he knew his decision would lead to thousands of canceled subscriptions and some irritated employees leaving the paper: “I knew I’d get pushback. If you want to lead, you have to lead, so we took that position.”
The LAT owner then said “competence matters” when it comes to endorsing a presidential candidate — the same phrase he has been using recently when criticizing LA Mayor Karen Bass’ handling of the wildfires.
“You know, did we feel as a group that [Harris] was a competent leader?” Dr. Soon-Shiong asked rhetorically.
He also said he did not see the “prepackaged endorsement” the editorial board had planned for Harris before making his decision to axe it. It was the first time the editorial board had not endorsed a Democrat for president since 2008.
“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 added.
“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 said. “It doesn’t mean we don’t endorse, but that’s not the basis of how we would endorse.”
