LA Times Editor Resigns After Owner Withholds President's Support | Los Angeles Times

Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, refused to allow the newspaper's editorial board to support Kamala Harris for president, the former editor of the newspaper's opinion section told a media news outlet on Wednesday.

Mariel Garza, a veteran California journalist who worked on the Times editorial board for nearly a decade, resigned from the paper in protest of Soon-Shiong's decision, she told the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR).

“In dangerous times, honest people must stand up. That’s how I get up,” Garza told CJR.

Harris is the first political party presidential candidate from California since Ronald Reagan.

In a lengthy social media post on the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies of EACH candidate during their tenure in the White House and how those policies have impacted the nation.”

Soon-Shiong wrote that the newspaper's opinion editors, who typically each endorse a candidate for a range of local and national offices and explain why each candidate is the best choice, instead “present clear and impartial information side by side, allowing our readers to decide.” , who would be worthy of being president for the next four years.

“Instead of taking this route as suggested, the editorial team chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision,” Soon-Shiong wrote. He ended with the words: “Please #vote.”

A spokesman for the Los Angeles Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Soon-Shiong, a biotech billionaire, bought the Los Angeles Times in 2018 with a promise to make it one of the “bastions of democracy in this country.” He said at the time that his $500 million purchase of the Times and other California newspapers was an attempt to combat fake news, which he called a “cancer of our time.”

In the resignation letter she shared with CJR, Garza did not cite possible reasons for Soon-Shiong's decision to block the California newspaper he owns from supporting Harris' presidential campaign.

However, Garza argued that the decision had consequences and also had the potential to undermine the credibility of any future editorial policy recommendations.

“It is confusing and potentially suspicious to readers that we did not support (Harris) this time,” Garza told CJR.

Semafor reported Tuesday that Los Angeles Times Editor-in-Chief Terry Tang “told editorial staff earlier this month that the paper would not endorse a candidate for the presidential election this cycle” and that the decision came from Soon-Shiong.

Garza told CJR that the editorial board had been preparing to endorse Harris and that she had even prepared a draft endorsement when Tang told her on Oct. 11 that Soon-Shiong had decided the paper would not endorse Harris The presidential election campaign will be a competition.

In the resignation letter she shared with her, Garza said she initially tried to convince herself that Soon-Shiong's decision not to allow presidential support did not play a role. “I told myself that the president’s support doesn’t really matter; that California would never vote for Trump; that no one would notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials as if we had supported them,” Garza wrote.

But her feelings changed when news of the non-endorsement became public, Garza wrote.

She noted that the Trump campaign quickly seized on this week's news that the Los Angeles Times failed to endorse the president, telling her supporters on Tuesday: “Even her fellow Californians know she's not up for the job.” “ The Just Already supported Kamala in her runs for California attorney general in 2010 and 2014 and in her run for U.S. Senate in 2016, but not this time.”

“Of course, it matters that the state’s largest newspaper — and still one of the largest in the country — has refused to endorse such an important race,” Garza wrote. “It makes us seem cowardly and hypocritical, maybe even a little sexist and racist. How could we rail against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country for eight years and then fail to support the perfectly decent Democratic challenger – the one we previously supported for the US Senate?”

On Wednesday, Semafor reported that the lack of support appeared to cost the financially struggling Los Angeles Times some of its subscribers. “Yesterday cancellations were twice as high as Monday,” and “nearly 400 subscribers cited 'editorial content' as the reason for cancellation,” Semafor's Maxwell Tani reported.