Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong
speaker
969 appearances
7 recordings
4 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 9 Oct
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 1.
Appearances
Well, when I kept on penetrating, I said, listen, it's a 300-bed hospital and then there's a huge tall building that the doctors used to be in. So there's many, many rooms. What's the problem? Well, they said, you know, federal law doesn't allow 16 beds. psychiatric patients to be more than 16 to be together. I said, what? I said, that doesn't make any sense. He said, yeah, because of whatever.
I said, well, I first overheard of that, but I'm sure if we go to Washington, we can change that.
No, I can understand. Well, hopefully they'll be changed and hopefully with RFK they'll be changed.
The thing I say to Dr. Cassidy is that we need more doctors in leadership in the Senate or anywhere, right? And I think that's, you really do, I think, because unless you've actually seen, touched, and felt a patient, you really don't have the empathy and understanding what patients go through. So thank you for having me.
You're welcome, and thank you for having me.
Oh, I think it's about six years now, around the 2018 timeframe.
Well, the accurate thing is that when I bought the paper, I wanted it to be really the voice of all people. And more importantly, I wanted our readers to understand the difference between news and opinion. And when I first started this, obviously, Norm Polstein was the executive editor with me and really seasoned and we had that same mission.
Unfortunately, COVID happened and I had to take my eye off the paper to focus on what I was doing on cancer and COVID. I hired a new editor as Norm retired, and the new editor, unfortunately, I think, pushed the paper into something I didn't believe was the right direction. So once I had time, which I did last year and beginning of this year, I began to realize we really need change.
Yeah, and I think, look, I recognize there'd be risks, right? And as I said in my tweets, if you have to lead, you have to lead. Leaders have to lead. And my concern was, were we... writing opinions based on only one-sided view and recognizing that California is a very blue state. But as you begin to see, I didn't want to be just the voice of California. I wanted to be the voice of the nation.
More importantly, I wanted to be the voice of truth. So taking that position that we could be the voice of truth, that we need to make that happen. I would like to refer you to the mission statement, which I'm going to read to you now. The editorial board actually has not even followed.
It says here, oh, editorials are written by a group of writers who meet three times a week to discuss and debate issues. I think that's okay, but maybe they're not really okay, because if the group of writers, and again, I'm getting into trouble for this, but so be it, are an echo chamber of themselves, we just get a one-sided view.
But what is most important in the mission statement, it goes on to say, and I'm quoting
we strive to take into account different perspectives particularly if they don't align with our own to inform our views our hope is to lay out arguments and analyses that can help our readers navigate complex questions or at the very least give them a well-considered way to think about the issues of the day that is an amazing laudable mission statement meaning
that we allow our readers to take into account different perspectives. And I didn't believe we were living up to our mission statement. So I needed to take a position that the former executive editor, who I terminated, and who's gone out to say that he resigned under protest, which is, again, a level of misinformation. We needed to make that change. And change is difficult. Get that.
Change is risky. Get that. Change is necessary in order to heal the nation. And LA Times has, I believe, a moral obligation to be the voice of all people.
The answer is yes and no, right? I mean, obviously, I've gotten a huge amount of negative feedback on X, but also positive feedback on X. And as you could see, I approached Scott Jennings the first because I watched him when he was a contributor to LA Times. But his voice was quasi-drowned, just like his voice on CNN was drowned, right? If you watch on CNN, he's one out of five.
And even the moderator would sort of throw a bone to Scott Jennings prior to the election. And it's amazing how it changed after the election. And I watched his courage. I watched his demeanor. I watched his respectfulness. And I watched his opinion based on what I listened to as mainly facts rather than speculation.
So I reached out to him and asked him would he join this new campaign of mine to change the editorial board and he accepted. I just tweeted it again. He was nominated like one of the rising stars in media. So obviously we made the right call.
Well, you know, as you said, leaders have to lead. We led, and interestingly enough, a day later or two days later, Jeff Bezos followed. Whether he followed us or whether he followed on his own accord, I have no idea. I have not communicated with Jeff on any of these issues. So whatever Jeff Bezos' motivation was, you have to ask Jeff. But my motivation was very clear.
I did not believe in an echo chamber prepackaged endorsement, which I have yet to see, but didn't believe in, of a candidate that I had some knowledge of. And both candidates I have some knowledge of. And I just wanted some fair, factual statements to be put out there. And the editorial board elected to rather than do that, keep quiet about it, which I supported.
Showing 901–920 of 969 · page 46 of 49
← Previous
Next →