A doctor and writer has accused the Los Angeles Times of altering an opinion piece he wrote criticizing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to make it supportive of him.
Eric Reinhart says the paper gave his article a misleading headline and cut key lines, obscuring his attempt to convey that President Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary is “effectively a mass murderer in waiting.”
The article was posted to X by the LA Times’ billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, with the headline “Trump’s healthcare disruption could pay off—if he pushes real reform.”
“He is our best chance of doing so,” Soon-Shiong opined in the body of the post. It was one of a string of posts in support of Kennedy’s confirmation by the Senate, which continues to hang in the balance.
Reinhart soon shared his discontent with the final version of the article in response to the billionaire’s post.
“I am the author of this OpEd, which was given a misleading title and from which key lines were cut—lines that made very clear that RFK Jr. is dangerously ignorant, has absolutely no business near HHS, and is effectively a mass murderer in waiting,” he wrote.
The headline Reinhart suggested when he submitted the piece was, “RFK Jr.’s Wrecking Ball Won’t Fix Public Health.”
Reinhart told Politico that the last-minute changes to the piece—especially the headline and photo, which he did not sign off on—happened “in such a way that it distorts and changes the intended meaning” of the piece.
In a statement to Politico, the LA Times claimed that Reinhart had approved the changes to his piece.
“Our editors in Opinion work with op-ed contributors to edit pieces for length, clarity, and accuracy, among other things,” spokesperson Hillary Manning wrote. “No op-ed pieces are published, as edited, without the permission of the author. That includes the op-ed written by Eric Reinhart.”
Based on a draft version of the piece that Reinhart posted to X, the paper cut his original final paragraph, which compared RFK Jr. to Luigi Mangione, the man alleged to have assassinated a top health-care executive in December.
The difference between the men, Reinhart wrote, is that “one operated outside the law to kill one person in defense of millions, whereas the other—via his egomaniacal disregard for scientific evidence—seeks to use law itself to inflict preventable death on those millions.”
Reinhart told Politico he feels “quite concerned that this was actually a deliberate manipulation” intended to support Kennedy, especially because of “the background of the owner’s politics and known record of interference and editorial processes of the newspaper.”
In October, Soon-Shiong blocked the paper’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent. He also reportedly later asked its editorial board to “take a break” from writing about Trump.
