LA Times Owner Vows ‘Very Left’ Overhaul

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, owner Patrick Soon-Shiong stated publicly for the first time that Harris’ support for Israel’s war in Gaza played a role in his decision to block the LA Times endorsement and said he plans to “balance” the paper’s opinion page with more conservative and centrist voices.

“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,” Soon-Shiong said, adding that he’s already spoken to candidates he hopes to add to the Times’ editorial roster.

On Sunday, Soon-Shiong (right) raised eyebrows with a post on X, stating that he plans to make his newspaper “fair and balanced so that all voices are heard and we can respectfully exchange every American’s view … from left to right to the center. Coming soon. A new Editorial Board. Trust in media is critical for a strong democracy.”

In the interview, Soon-Shiong said his plan to transform the editorial board is “not as inflammatory as you’re firing everybody,” but that he is “really trying to identify voices that speak to all the Americans.”

The billionaire, who acquired the Times in 2018 for $500 million, also expressed concern about the perception of opinion in news reporting, saying the paper needs “a real rethinking” of how its coverage is structured and suggested that the current designations of the opinion section, columnists and editorials are not clear enough.

“Somebody just picking up the paper, Gen Z today or something, I don’t know would recognize that that is an opinion,” he said. “This conflation of news and opinion of the news sometimes gets all mixed up, and I think that’s part of the problem of why there’s a reduction in trust of the press.”