The Los Angeles Times is giving us a masterclass in how wealthy ownership can dismantle editorial independence from within. According to Oliver Darcy's reporting at Status, Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong has instituted a new policy requiring all opinion headlines to receive his personal approval before publication—a move that came after he objected to Virginia Heffernan's piece titled "Elon Musk bought himself a starring role in Trump's second term. What could go wrong?"
This unprecedented level of micromanagement didn't come out of nowhere. The New York Times' Katie Robertson reports that just weeks earlier, Soon-Shiong blocked an editorial criticizing Trump's cabinet picks unless the paper also published an opposing view. The editorial, which argued that the Senate should follow its traditional confirmation process and voiced concerns about nominees like Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., never ran. Instead, editors scrambled to fill the space with a more Trump-friendly piece titled "Trump has a chance to be a true education president."