THIS IS WHY SPORTS TEAM OWNERS SHOULDN’T OWN MEDIA COMPANIES

Patrick Soon-Shiong owns the Los Angeles Times and a piece of the Lakers, which suggests a conflict of interest when his columnist minimizes a Jaxson Hayes signing after crusading against Trevor Bauer

     While reading an overly gushing column in the Los Angeles Times — titled, “Rob Pelinka and the Lakers win free agency and the summer” — I realized the owner of the Times also owns 4.5 percent of those very Lakers. As I kept reading, I knew part of the team’s new talent haul includes center Jaxson Hayes, who was convicted last year after a domestic incident and pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of false imprisonment and resisting arrest.

     Those are two more misdemeanors than were assessed to Trevor Bauer, who never was arrested after a months-long investigation — much less charged with a crime or convicted — in a sexual assault case that evaporated.

     The court ordered Hayes to serve 450 hours of community service and take a year of weekly domestic violence classes, alongside three years of probation.

     Bauer didn’t have to serve one nanosecond of community service, didn’t attend a single class and continued to live free of court supervision.

     So explain why the author of the column, Bill Plaschke, crusaded on numerous occasions to run Bauer out of L.A., off the roster of the Dodgers and completely out of Major League Baseball? The judicial system — which, last I looked, determines guilt and innocence in criminal matters — exonerated Bauer in a bizarre but altogether 21st-Centurial rough-sex escapade with a San Diego woman, who twice drove two-plus hours to his Pasadena home for romps after asking to be “choked out,” among other texted demands. Her photos suggest Bauer went much too far. Photos can be doctored in such cases, one of those dirty legal secrets that happen in digital shops and stay in digital shops.

     Point being, Bauer walked away. Hayes did not — and now is being sued by his accuser, Sofia Jamora, who says he grabbed her, dragged her down stairs, threw her and hit her with a suitcase. A police body-camera video doesn’t lie, showing Hayes scuffling with police; one officer said Hayes threw him against a wall, leaving him hospitalized with an elbow injury. I am not here to assess overall guilt or innocence. I was not present on that wee-hours morning in Woodland Hills, after all, nor was I present anywhere near Bauer’s sex den. But what I know to be true is that Hayes has a criminal record. Bauer does not.

     And yet, Plaschke merely brushed over the Hayes case at the bottom of his effusive, rah-rah piece Monday. Unlike Bauer, who was presumed guilty from Day One by the same columnist, Hayes is getting a major pass, with Plaschke refusing to offer even a few words of harsh commentary about the two-charge conviction. “The Lakers,” he wrote, “surely will monitor this situation amid the understandable celebration of their summer success.”

     He concluded in the next paragraph, in a segue that prompted me to cringe and shout and wonder who hijacked Plaschke’s spine: “Opening night, can you imagine … a season that can’t start soon enough.”

     I’m sure Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong — the 70-year-old billionaire who pays Plaschke’s salary, while often seen courtside cheering for the famed NBA team he partially owns — loved every word and exclamation point. Never mind the selective hypocrisy of his veteran columnist, who evidently bases crime-related judgments not on the findings of trained police investigators and experienced judges … but whatever he decides in his politically swayed mind. Or, worse, whatever he thinks will satisfy his boss in an uncertain employment climate for even accomplished media professionals. Anyone who reads my columns knows I’m usually a big Plaschke fan. Not today. It’s one thing to criticize the Lakers or other teams for sub-par performances, as he frequently does. It’s quite another when it’s time to launch a public campaign against a sports-team wrongdoer, especially when Plaschke is a willing shooter. This is where a local columnist proves his mettle and guts, when he must ignore Soon-Shiong’s allegiances and follow the same zero-tolerance path he took with Bauer. This is where I found trouble in Chicago — proudly, defiantly — when I bucked the corrupt relationships my newspaper bosses had with local team owners.

     Nah, I have to read escape-hatch puffery: “The Lakers surely will monitor this situation amid the understandable celebration of their summer success.” WTF? Judge Bill just gave a break to the Lakers and their popular controlling owner, Jeanie Buss, and soon enough, we’ll be reading gooey training-camp features about Hayes in the Times. This as Bauer pitches in Japanese exile, railroaded by Major League Baseball, which certainly appreciates how the Times launched a full-bore offensive against the former Cy Young Award winner. It helped give commissioner Rob Manfred the local public-relations ammunition to slam Bauer with a record 324-game suspension, later reduced to 194 games by an independent arbitrator. And it gave the Dodgers the perceptional leverage to save millions of dollars during the suspension — and the momentum to eventually dump him.

     Big Sports, with the help of the Times, is trying to ruin Bauer’s life. And Big Sports, with the help of the Times, is trying to save Hayes’ life. Why?

     Call it the Soon-Shiong Effect, maybe a subconscious acknowledgment of the boss’ mindset and whims more than a direct order from on high. In a sports media industry weakening by the hour, the previous power and influence of a columnist has shrunk to soft, kiss-the-ring, keep-the-gig diplomacy. Journalists are fanboys now. Or you’re writing for the independent truth saviors at Substack. It’s where I have the editorial freedom to do my best, most transparent and most meaningful work while pointing out to confused media consumers who’s real and who might be in the bag for a league, team or owner … or just trying to protect a paycheck until the layoff savages arrive. Sometimes, that sports owner happens to be your superior. Red Sox owner John Henry pays the salary of Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, a career hardass who went mushy for a spell when Henry and management decided not to retain Mookie Betts for monster money. Now we have Plaschke handing off his gavel to Buss and Dr. Patrick, allowing coach Darvin Ham to maneuver Hayes into the rotation as LeBron James applauds. The column lauds what represents a good overall plan by management — rejecting Kyrie Irving and splitting a big-money contract into several strategic pieces. But come now. It hardly means the Lakers rate as “the greatest show on earth” during this NBA offseason, as he wrote. Phoenix might be. Miami will be if the Heat land Damian Lillard. Of course, San Antonio ultimately wins the summer, with Victor Wembanyama measuring in at 7 feet and 5 inches — and growing.

     We don’t need more media fanboys. I see enough of them in Chicago and on ESPN, what’s left of it. Plaschke mentions a detail about the Hayes case that the Lakers certainly want out there: An officer knelt on his neck while trying to detain him, which later was found to violate Los Angeles Police Department policy. But this is not remotely in the vicinity of a George Floyd horror, and not once has it been portrayed as such. It doesn’t mean Hayes’ conviction — and allegations cited in his accuser’s lawsuit — should be left for the Lakers to simply “monitor.” It shouldn’t let Hayes off the hook for what else is visible on the body-cam video. And what else could await him in court. The Lakers need to address the situation they inherited. Say, today.

     I abhor double standards, in the media and legal worlds. Usually, Plaschke stays on a steady course in his opinions. But nothing is more important to a newspaper writer, in a job-gnarly 2023, than getting an “attaboy” from the big boss. On opening night, Soon-Shiong should have his star columnist sit beside him, and they can cheer together for Jaxson Hayes as the Lakers win.

     Better, he’d sell the Times to someone who isn’t a fan first, a team owner second, and an inconsistent opinion dispenser third.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.