Last week, social media was aflutter with the news that neither the Los Angeles Times nor the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post would be endorsing Kamala Harris for President.
The “democracy dies in darkness” jokes were everywhere after the Post’s failure to endorse Harris, leading to a 200,000 subscriber drop-off for the news site. But we know why someone like Bezos is trying to appear neutral in the face of a very uncertain election. It’s possible that he fears retribution from Trump should he end up (god forbid) winning in November. And we know that when it comes to billionaires being faced with the threat of potentially making less money they don’t need, they can and will act desperate.
But what’s the LA Times’ excuse?
Well…
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So Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire who owns the LA Times and was responsible for the paper not making an endorsement? He was in talks with Trump in 2017 about a role overseeing US healthcare if the ACA had been abolished. h/t @amyalexca.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2017/01/24/t…
— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath.bsky.social) October 26, 2024 at 6:35 PM
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Apparently tech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is the owner of the paper, and back in 2017 he was in talks with Trump about acting as a potential “health care czar” in the States. Nothing seems to have come from those talks, but it seems like Soon-Shiong is still hoping to court Trump’s favor with this move.
Related
This is really bad.
As queer writer Leah McElrath put it in a BlueSky post, tech billionaires aren’t trying to cozy up to Trump because they fear retribution in a second Trump term. They see Trump’s potential win as an opportunity.
It’s terrifying that two major news outlets can be silenced at the drop of a hat, but when tech billionaires decide to invest in media, we do have to ask ourselves what the end game really is.
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