I’m not toadying to Trump, LA Times boss says

Cancer drug billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, an ally of the US President, insists he simply wants the media to be fair – and denies that Robert F. Kennedy is an anti-vaxxer.

US President Donald Trump, right, greets LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong ahead of a state dinner at the Lusail Palace in Doha on May 14, 2025. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP.

Spending time with Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire cancer drug pioneer and owner of the Los Angeles Times, feels like going back in time five years.

Before meeting him at his ­office in El Segundo, south of Los Angeles, I am required to take a Covid swab test.

On entering, I’m handed a mask.

In the event, the 72-year-old suggests we sit, maskless, outside in a windy courtyard.

“Are you cold? Are you OK out here?” asks Soon-Shiong, who retains a South African accent from his youth in Port Elizabeth, where he was raised.

It is indeed cold, but Soon-Shiong seems more comfortable not sharing an indoor space.

He has just finished a long meeting at the cancer treatment centre he founded, and seems ­distracted.

Soon-Shiong, with an estimated net worth of $16.5bn, mixes in high circles. Last week he was in Riyadh, where he spoke to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and President Donald Trump, a man he is fast developing as an ally.

Soon-Shiong is LA’s richest resident, a basketball fan who bought a stake in his beloved ­Lakers franchise in 2010.

He made his fortune with a late-stage cancer treatment, and controls biotech firms Im­munity­Bio and NantHealth.

But it is his ownership of the LA Times, a beleaguered, loss-making 144-year-old newspaper, that attracts most attention.

In the past year, Soon-Shiong has come under fire for seemingly attempting to win over the US President by eliminating liberal “bias” from the newspaper.

He recently announced a “bias meter” to judge the politics behind opinion pieces on its website.

High-profile staff have resigned in protest. “Which is fine, actually,” says Soon-Shiong. “Change is difficult.”

At his side, the LA Times’s PR chief looks on uncomfortably. Within a couple of weeks of this interview, she leaves the company after 16 years’ working there.

Soon-Shiong bought the LA Times for $US500m in 2018 because he felt an “obligation” to use his money to secure the future of his local paper. He is said to have remarked at the time that saving it couldn’t be as hard as curing cancer, and set a goal of millions of online subscribers.

At the last count, the paper had about 275,000.

The company does not disclose figures but it is said to have lost about $US50m last year.

More than 130 jobs have gone in two years.

As the scale of the challenge became apparent, Soon-Shiong became more hands-on, investing more of his 15-hour working days in the title and taking a closer interest in editorial matters.

He enraged some when he stopped the editorial board from making a presidential endorsement before the US election last November, interpreted as a move to prevent it backing Kamala Harris.

“I said: ‘Why don’t we create a factual analysis of each candidate, pros and cons, and let the readers decide?’ Which sounded reasonable – to me, at least.”

Nika Soon-Shiong, his pro-Palestinian daughter, who in the past has faced accusations of meddling in its coverage, claimed the Harris snub was down to the Democrat candidate’s support for Israel. Her father distanced himself from those comments and said his daughter, a political activist who set up the Fund for Guaranteed Income, “does not have any role at the LA Times” … but he later indicated to CNN the Gaza war was one factor in the decision.

Soon-Shiong is not the only billionaire owner of a liberal paper to have riled readers. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, also decided against making an endorsement. The well-worn conspiracy theory, widely aired but absent of proof, is that both were attempting to curry favour with the then-likely incoming Trump.

When I put this to Soon-Shiong, he looks annoyed. “You just made an entire story up right now,” he says. “That is why media’s not trusted. And so what I’m saying is, basically: do your job. If you want to report, report. If you want to have an opinion, that’s fine, but it should be an opinion based on facts.

“My motivation was to be truthful, honest and fair – and to share the voices of all Americans. [Trump] won the popular vote, which means that half of Americans believe in what he says.”

As well as being friendly with Trump, he is a supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic who is US Health Secretary. Soon-Shiong thinks he is right to question the dangers of some vaccines, and was right in the past to raise concerns about dyes used in American food.

Subscribers to the LA Times can expect to hear plenty more about Soon-Shiong’s views on pharma and vaccines soon. He is in the process of starting his own podcast, Health Decoded, under the LA Times brand. This will set alarm bells ringing among his workforce. Soon-Shiong shrugs, saying opponents can resign if they wish.

THE SUNDAY TIMES