LA Times Owner Tells Fox News He’s Looking ‘For People Like Scott Jennings’ to ‘Balance’ His Paper

Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher spoke with the owner of the LA Times on Thursday night, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, about the future of the paper following his refusal to endorse in the presidential race and replacing his editorial board.

“Sir, it is great to have you on the show. It really is. And William is, as he was telling us, I think he’s right. He makes a fair point when he says because the Los Angeles Times on the — on the headline, this is on the front page, one of the things reads, ‘Trump’s big rally doubles down on hatred.’ That’s the news, it’s not the op-ed,” Gallagher began, asking:

And I’m wondering when you say you want this paper to be fair and balanced, do you plan to just fix the editorial section or are you planning to go over and redo the entire paper?

“I think the latter. I think exactly — I think one of my concerns is you as a journalist would understand that’s news versus opinion. And we’ve conflated news and opinion. So, the first thing I want to do is ensure that we explicitly say this is news. And if it’s news, it should just be the facts period. And if it’s an opinion, that’s maybe an opinion of the news and that’s what I call now a voice,” Soon-Shiong replied, adding, “And so, we want voices from all sides to be heard.”

“And we want the news to be just the facts,” Soon-Shiong said as Gallagher agreed.

“When you talk about the editorial board because when you tweeted it, seemed like you were going to get rid of the entire editorial board. They have all left. Is that the plan to redo the entire editorial board or just fill in the people that have left?” Gallagher asked.

“Again, I think it’s important for us to differentiate the editorial board is responsible for these opinions on these voices. So, right now, we don’t have an editorial board if we are truly honest about ourselves that are balanced. And so, I’ve gotten beaten up about fair and balance. So, I’m looking for people like Scott Jennings. Scott Jennings who is on CNN and he’s one out of six usually in the — in the room where we need to have all voices, the right, the left, and the moderate, the center,” Soon-Shiong said, adding:

And I think it’s important because the editors are responsible of stories that are told and stories that are not told. Editors have these nuances of the word hatred versus could the president-elect make a real impact. And we need views from both sides. And my goal is not to change that entire editorial board for that — for that perspective.

“It’s interesting because the election, the voters were very clear on what they wanted, the mandate, even in Southern California where you have — you have Orange County and you have San Bernardino County and you have Riverside County that are more conservative. How do you reach out to them? They are your readers. How do you trust — get their trust back?” Gallagher pressed.

“Well, in fact, if you look at the 2022 map of California, look at the 2024 map of California, the change has been rather dramatic moving towards the right as well as being very liberal as before. So, it is our responsibility to maintain democracy to have the views of all our California readers, in fact, the views of all the national readers to be — to be added. Because if we just have the one side, it becomes nothing else but an echo chamber. And so, it’s going to be risky and difficult. I’m going to take a lot of heat which I already am,” Soon-Shiong replied.

Watch the clip above.