The billionaire-owned Los Angeles Times has been accused of making significant changes to the body and headline of an op-ed on the American health care system without informing the author, morphing what was meant to be a critique into a quasi-endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Political anthropologist and social psychiatrist Eric Reinhart penned the op-ed, initially titled “RFK Jr’s Wrecking Ball Won’t Fix Public Health." When it was published on Wednesday, he noticed the headline had been changed. The new version? “Trump’s healthcare disruption could pay off — if he pushes real reform.”
Along with the headline tweak, editors cut out much of Reinhart’s framing, which was critical of Kennedy, including his charge that Kennedy, “via his egomaniacal disregard for scientific evidence, seeks to use law itself to inflict preventable death on those millions,” per his initial draft of the piece.
The final version of Reinhart's piece opens with a photo of Kennedy. After it was published, the Times' billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, shared it on X as if it were an endorsement, tagging Kennedy and commenting on the prospects of health care reform: "He is our best chance of doing so."
Speaking to Salon, Reinhart said he has asked the paper to change the headline but has not heard back.
In a statement to Salon, Hillary Manning, a spokesperson for the Times, suggested the edits to Reinhart's piece weren't out of the ordinary.
"Our editors in Opinion work with op-ed contributors to edit pieces for length, clarity and accuracy, among other things. No op-ed pieces are published, as edited, without the permission of the author. That includes the op-ed written by Eric Reinhart," Manning said.
But Reinhart denies ever agreeing to what was ultimately published. It’s not unusual for editors to make tweaks or headline changes to a piece without author feedback, Reinhart noted, but changing the meaning of a submission goes well beyond a typical edit.
“You trust in that process that the editors that you're working with are not going to screw you over, that they are going to do their best to be faithful to the key arguments of your piece,” he told Salon. “You don't make last-minute cuts, without the author's explicit approval, that are going to change the fundamental interpretation.”
Reinhart acknowledged that he implicitly gave editors clearance to make edits but, responding to the Times' statement, said he “expected basic journalistic integrity in that process that would not open a wide door for distortion of what the editors knew very well to be my intended arguments and effects in relation to the pressing political question of the day: RFK Jr.’s nomination to a position I believe he would use to inflict massive harm on U.S. and global public health.”
In his case, Reinhart believes the final piece, coupled with the photo of Kennedy it ran alongside, could be misconstrued as supportive of the anti-vaccine activist and his bid to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
“I wanted to make very clear, if this is running during the RFK hearings, that I absolutely do not support RFK. RFK does not represent any of the goals that I articulate in the piece, and he is incredibly dangerous,” Reinhart told Salon.
We need your help to stay independent
Soon-Shiong previously stepped in to kill an editorial board endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris before the November election. But Reinhart argued that the changes to his piece are a more egregious affront to journalistic standards.
“If somebody kills my piece at the last minute for their own political ideology, that's frustrating … but I can live with that,” Reinhart said. “But somebody distorting or encouraging audiences to view your writing in a distorted manner in a way that's contrary to the clear intent of your submission, that's an entirely different matter.”
It’s not clear that Soon-Shiong himself pushed for the changes, but Reinhart said his influence over the publication is cause for concern either way.
“It's symptomatic of a growing problem across our American media landscape. It's increasingly controlled by people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Pat, other corporate interests and billionaires who are not shy about using their power and their wealth to manipulate public discourse,” he told Salon.
Reinhart said advice to other writers is to consider a publication's conflicts of interest — and erosion of editorial independence — before pitching.
“If you are a freelance writer, or a writer of any kind, and you are working with the LA Times on something in which their owner has known vested interests, I wouldn't trust that newspaper,” he said.
Shares