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los angeles times
How a Professional Bully Is Winning Control of the Media
Major media outlets from CBS to The Washington Post have “bent the knee” to President Trump’s specious demands.
Apr 25, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump is following the authoritarian’s handbook that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán used to consolidate power in Hungary. He is attacking the independent institutions that comprise the infrastructure supporting democracy—universities, law firms, culture, and the media.
And he is winning.
Major media outlets have “bent the knee” his press secretary’s preferred phrase for capitulation to Trump’s specious demands. His latest conquest is CBS.
CBS
Days before the 2024 election, Trump filed a frivolous lawsuit accusing the network of bias in broadcasting a “60 Minutes” interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Seeking $10 billion in damages, the complaint claimed that the edited interview and associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” in Harris’ favor.
Prominent First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams said that “the First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation.” Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet called it “ridiculous junk and should be mocked.” Attorney Charles Tobin warned, “This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.”
A few days later, Trump won the election. And now CBS’ parent company, Paramount, wants to settle the case.
Whatever money CBS pays Trump to settle his frivolous lawsuit is extortion.
Through her family’s holding company, Shari Redstone who is “friendly with Trump” is Paramount’s controlling shareholder. If the Federal Communications Commission approves its pending merger with Skydance Media, Redstone will reap millions.
On February 6, Redstone told the Paramount board that she wanted to settle Trump’s lawsuit. The next day, Trump doubled his damages claim to $20 billion. As the media reported Redstone’s desire to resolve the case, Trump pounced. On April 13, he asserted on social media that the FCC should impose “the maximum fine and punishment” on CBS and the network “should lose its license.”
The parties have agreed on a mediator, but whatever money CBS pays Trump to settle his frivolous lawsuit is extortion. The more profound cost is the loss of CBS’ journalistic independence, which became apparent on April 22 when the producer of “60 Minutes” resigned.
In the program’s 57-year history, Bill Owens—who became the “60 Minutes” executive producer in 2019 after 30 years at CBS—was only the third person to run it. Owens’s memo to his staff should be a warning to all of us:
“[O]ver the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”
CBS wasn’t Trump’s first media victim.
The Washington Post
In early November 2024, The Washington Post editorial board had signed off on an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. But it never ran. Owner Jeff Bezos personally killed it and, for the first time in decades, the paper did not endorse a U.S. presidential candidate.
A few hours after Bezos’s “no endorsement” decision became public, officials from his Blue Origin aerospace company, which has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA, met with Trump.
After Trump won the election, Bezos flew to Mar-a-Lago where he and his fiancée dined with the president-elect. Shortly thereafter, Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. And another Bezos company—Amazon—paid $40 million to license a documentary about Melania Trump, who personally will receive $28 million.
On February 26, Bezos announced a new rightward shift for the Post: It would now advocate for “personal liberties and free markets” and not publish opposing viewpoints on those topics.
The paper’s opinion section editor, David Shipley, resigned in response to the change. Prominent columnists followed him out the door, and more than 250,000 readers canceled their subscriptions.
The Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times had an established record of presidential endorsements too—until 2024. Its 2020 endorsement of Joe Biden blasted Trump. But in 2024, billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong quashed an editorial that would have endorsed Vice President Harris. As at the Post, columnists and editorial board members resigned in protest, and the paper lost thousands of subscribers.
After the election, Soon-Shiong killed another editorial set to run with this headline: “Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should be.”
Self-censorship is the most effective, enduring, and dangerous method of abridging free speech.
More than one-half of Americans “often” or “sometimes” get their news from social media. One-third of all adults in the U.S. get their news from Facebook (operated by Meta). Meta’s president Mark Zuckerberg was among the billionaires who traveled to Mar-a-Lago after the election, met with Trump, and donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. (With the help of corporate and billionaire megadonors like Zuckerberg and Bezos, Trump raised a record $239 million for the fund.)
Then Zuckerberg gave Trump a bigger gift: Meta abandoned third-party fact-checking of Facebook posts. As his rationale, Zuckerberg repeated Trump’s false talking points that fact-checking was “censorship” and reflected an “anti-Trump bias.”
Asked if he thought Zuckerberg was “directly responding to the threats” that Trump had made to him in the past, Trump answered: “Probably.”
Meanwhile, Meta invited Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a longtime Trump supporter, to join its board of directors.
PBS and NPR
On April 26, Trump will send Congress his request to halt all funding for public media—including NPR and PBS.
Viktor Orbán’s Playbook—The Trump Sequel
Since his return to power, Hungary’s prime minister has used “muscular state policy to achieve conservative ends,” according to conservative activist Christopher Rufo. Orbán is “attempting to rebuild its culture and institutions, from schools to universities to media.”
Orbán began “working with friendly oligarchs to purchase and transform media companies into conservative stalwarts; directing government advertising budgets to politically-aligned outlets;… and pressuring the holdover state media… to provide more favorable coverage.”
Rufo insists that Hungary “has a media environment at least as competitive as that of many Western nations.” Experienced observers disagree:
Human Rights Watch found that the government is using its near media monopoly to strengthen its hold on democratic institutions… The government’s increased control over the media market is linked to its broader assault on rule of law in Hungary, including undermining judicial independence and state capture of public institutions…
Trump’s attacks on universities, law firms, culture, and the media are all of a piece. Viktor Orbán’s Hungary provides a roadmap of his battle plan and a preview of his end game.
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'Pretty Sh*tty': Doctor Says LA Times Disingenuously Spun His RFK Jr. Op-Ed
"My first time working with the Los Angeles Times, and I expect also my last," said Dr. Eric Reinhart.
Jan 31, 2025
A public health expert on Friday accused the Los Angeles Times—whose billionaire owner recently sparked controversy for restricting editorials critical of Republican U.S. President Donald Trump—of distorting a highly critical opinion piece he authored in order to paint Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a positive light.
Dr. Eric Reinhart, a political anthropologist and psychoanalytic clinician, said his piece, which the Timespublished on Wednesday, was originally titled, "RFK Jr.'s Wrecking Ball Won't Fix Public Health." However, Times editors ran the article under the title, "Trump's Healthcare Disruption Could Pay Off—If He Pushes Real Reform."
"My first time working with the Los Angeles Times, and I expect also my last," Reinhart said on social media Friday. "A vote for RFK Jr. is a vote for nothing but chaos, the opposite of the essential public-systems building I argue for in the op-ed, and mass death."
"Editors edit and control final copy and [headline], I get that," Reinhart added. "But editing out a very central and timely point in the minutes before sending to press while then also assigning a title and image that suggest an argument entirely opposite to the author's clear intent is bad."
As The New Republic's Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling reported Friday:
The original and final versions of Reinhart's article differ drastically in message. The first paragraph of the published opinion piece takes an optimistic tone about Kennedy's role in the Trump administration, suggesting that the virulent conspiracy theorist could be an answer and solution to the American public's bubbling resentment toward the healthcare industry.
Writing Friday on the social media platform Bluesky, Reinhart—who called the Times editors' actions "pretty shitty"—said his draft does "not leave my stance on RFK Jr. remotely ambiguous."
"He's dangerously ignorant, egomaniacal, and effectively a mass murderer in waiting," the doctor added. "He has no business being anywhere near HHS."
Biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, who has owned the Times since 2018, prompted a wave of staff resignations and reader subscription cancellations following his issuance last month of an internal memo asking the members of the newspaper's board and opinion writers to "take a break from writing about Trump."
This, after Soon-Shiong blocked its editorial board from endorsing former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president, a decision he
claimed was based partly on a desire for more balance in the Times opinion section and partly on Harris' complicity in the U.S.-backed Israeli annihilation of Gaza.
Earlier this week, Soon-Shiong wrote on social media: "I had not met Bobby Kennedy until a few months ago. The more I got to know him I truly believe he has the American public's best interests at heart. I have worried about toxins and the cause of cancer my entire career. As a physician-scientist I really hope he is confirmed" as health and human services secretary.
In a statement published Friday by Politico, Times vice president of communications Hillary Manning said that "our editors in opinion work with op-ed contributors to edit pieces for length, clarity, and accuracy, among other things," and that "no op-ed pieces are published, as edited, without the permission of the author. That includes the op-ed written by Eric Reinhart."
Reinhart retorted by saying, "What makes it concerning to me is the background of the owner's politics and known record of interference and editorial processes of the newspaper."
He added, "The depressing public health issue that was unfolding just as the op-ed was published... is, 'Are we or are we not going to confirm RFK Jr. for this incredibly important position for which he is massively and dangerously underqualified?'"
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'Meddling for MAGA': Billionaire Owner Asks LA Times Editorial Board to Stop Writing About Trump
"Soon-Shiong has made several moves to force the paper, over the forceful objections of his staff, into a posture more sympathetic to Donald Trump," said one longtime opinion contributor who recently resigned.
Dec 19, 2024
Patrick Soon-Shiong—the biotech billionaire whose moves as owner of the Los Angeles Times have prompted a wave of resignations and subscription cancellations—is reportedly now asking the paper's editorial board to refrain from publishing pieces about Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
Oliver Darcy's Status newsletter accused Soon-Shiong of "meddling for MAGA" by requesting that Times members of the board and opinion writers, according to an internal memo, "take a break from writing about Trump."
Based on the memo viewed by Darcy, Soon-Shiong has asked editors to send him "the text of every editorial and the name of its writer" prior to publication, prompting staff "concerns about the ability of the board to do its job without fear of retaliation," according to Status.
Darcy wrote that the memo came from staffers who "said they were notifying [executive editor Terry] Tang, who oversees both the newsroom and opinion section, of Soon-Shiong's alarming actions because the newspaper's ethics policy requires employees to report 'anything that might cast a shadow on the Times' reputation.'"
"Glad I already resigned or I would have to do it now."
Responding Wednesday to the Status report, former Times senior legal affairs columnist Harry Litman wrote on social media, "Glad I already resigned or I would have to do it now."
Darcy's newsletter follows reporting last week that Soon-Shiong scuppered a draft editorial criticizing some of Trump's Cabinet nominees, telling editors that it could not run unless accompanied by a piece presenting an opposing view.
Earlier this month, Soon-Shiong said he planned to embed an artificial intelligence-powered "bias meter" in Times articles and editorials.
Soon-Shiong—a surgeon by training—has praised three doctors tapped for Trump's Cabinet. He has also dined with Trump, calling it an "incredible honor."
While Soon-Shiong has owned the Times—for which he paid $500 million as part of a multi-outlet deal—since 2018, the extent of his involvement in the paper's operations made headlines in October after he blocked its editorial board from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
The decision—which Soon-Shiong said was based partly on a desire for more balance in the Times opinion section and partly on Harris' complicity in the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza—prompted the resignation of editorials editor Maria Garza.
Other resignations have followed as "morale in the newsroom has plummeted," according to Darcy.
Litman explained on his Substack following his resignation earlier this month that he does not "want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons."
"My resignation is a protest and visceral reaction against the conduct of the paper's owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong," he wrote. "Soon-Shiong has made several moves to force the paper, over the forceful objections of his staff, into a posture more sympathetic to Donald Trump."
Contrasting Soon-Shiong's hands-on leadership style with The Washington Post's multicentibillionaire owner,Chicago Tribune contributor Steve Chapman wrote on social media:
Jeff Bezos: "Nobody ever wrecked the reputation of a respected newspaper as fast as I did."
Patrick Soon-Shiong: "Hold my beer."
The Los Angeles TimestoldThe Guardian that its management team "is currently reviewing the concerns" expressed in the editors' memo.
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