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According to a new report by former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, the owner of The Los Angeles Times has ordered his newspaper’s editorial staff to stop writing about President-elect Donald Trump.
IN recent articleindependent journalist reported on the letter received from Times staff complaining about how Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is direct when it comes to publishing articles critical of Trump, as well as making other editorial decisions.
According to the memorandum, which was sent to executive editor Terry Tang and signed by several employees of the Opinion department, Dr. Soon-Shiong instructed the editorial staff to “take a break from writing” about the president-elect.
Darcy said that the staff signed the letter because Dr. Soon-Shiong’s “alarming actions” and noted their commitment to reporting “anything that could cast a shadow on the reputation of the Times.”
The staff of the LA Times reportedly expressed concern about the owner of their branch, Dr. Soon-Shiong, and his “alarming actions” in trying to make the newspaper’s editorial board less liberal. (Marcus Yam / Contributor)
“We understand that Ph.D. Soon-Shiong has a role in shaping the tone and direction of the editorial and Opinion section, but we are still bound by the fundamental values and ethics of journalism, including the duty to be transparent and act in the service of the public,” the letter states.
It added: “We believe we have an obligation to report them under the ethics policy, which states that ‘the primary objective should always be to protect the integrity of The Times’.”
As Darcy wrotethe letter also states that dr. Soon-Shiong “introduced a new policy that prohibits editorials that contain criticism of the president-elect unless they are presented alongside another opinion that represents a ‘contrary point of view.'”
The report continued: “This new restriction, which appears to apply only to matters involving Trump and not to other officials or issues, has effectively killed or indefinitely delayed multiple editorials that have been written and edited, but remain unpublished.”
The letter also accuses the owner of demanding that the editors send him the text of each editorial and the names of their authors before publication. “The views and content of the editorial board were pre-emptively censored before publication, and its arguments, headlines and topics were subject to boundaries that did not exist before,” the letter states.
The report is the latest in the LA Times owner’s mission to make the paper “a middle-of-the-road, trusted news source,” a mission he went public with after announcing in October that the paper’s editorial board would not support presidential candidate in the 2024 presidential elections.
The rejected support caused a great reaction, and the newspaper lost over 20,000 subscribers. In response, some journalists and colleagues left the paper.
Despite the furor, the owner continued to advocate for the nonpartisan LA Times. He announced last month that the newspaper would establish “new editorship” with a variety of voices, including conservative CNN political commentator Scott Jennings.
“Trust in the media is essential to a strong democracy,” he wrote on X as he touted his ambitions for the new governing board.
In the interview with Fox News in November, Dr. Soon-Shiong said, “It’s our responsibility to maintain democracy, to have the views of all of our California readers, in fact, the views of all of our national readers, to be aired. Because if it only has one side, it becomes nothing more than an echo chamber.”
The LA Times did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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