Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, refused to allow the paper’s editorial staff to endorse Kamala Harris for president, the former editor of the paper’s opinion section told a news source on Wednesday.
Mariel Garza, a veteran California journalist who has worked for the Times editorial staff for nearly a decade, has resigned in protest of Soon-Shiong’s decision, she told the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR).
‘In dangerous times, honest people must stand up. This is how I get up,” Garza told CJR.
Harris is the first presidential candidate from California in a political party since Ronald Reagan.
In a lengthy social media post on factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies of EACH candidate during their tenure in the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.”
Related: Kamala Harris denounces Trump as a ‘fascist’ who wants ‘unchecked power’
Soon-Shiong wrote that the paper’s opinion editors, who typically each endorse one candidate for a range of local and national offices and explain why each candidate is the best choice, instead “present clear and unbiased information side by side.” our readers could decide who would be worthy of being president for the next four years.
“Rather than follow this path as suggested, the editors chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision,” Soon-Shiong wrote. He ended with the words: “Please #vote.”
A spokesperson 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 and vowed to make it one of the “bulwarks of democracy in this country.” He said at the time that his $500 million purchase of the Times and other California newspapers was an effort to combat fake news, which he called a “cancer of our times.”
So many comments on the @latimes The Editorial Board will not issue a presidential endorsement this year. Let me clarify how this decision came about.
The editorial staff had the opportunity to prepare a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies of EACH…
—Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong (@DrPatSoonShiong) October 23, 2024
In the resignation letter she shared with CJR, Garza did not mention any possible reasons for Soon-Shiong’s decision to block the California newspaper he owns from supporting Harris’ campaign for president.
But Garza argued that the decision had consequences and that it also had the potential to undermine the credibility of any future political recommendations made by the editors.
“It is baffling to readers, and possibly suspicious, that we have not approved it [Harris] this time,” Garza told CJR.
Semafor reported Tuesday that Los Angeles Times editor-in-chief Terry Tang “told the editors earlier this month that the newspaper would not endorse a candidate in the presidential election this cycle,” and that the decision came from Soon-Shiong. .
Garza told CJR that the editorial staff had been preparing to endorse Harris, and had even prepared an endorsement outline, when Tang informed her on Oct. 11 that Soon-Shiong had decided the paper would not issue an endorsement in the presidential election . competition.
In the resignation letter she shared, Garza said she had initially tried to convince herself that Soon-Shiong’s decision not to grant a presidential endorsement did not matter. “I told myself that presidential endorsements don’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 that it seemed like we had supported her,” Garza wrote.
But her feelings changed after news of the non-approval became public, Garza wrote.
She noted that the Trump campaign was quick to learn the news this week that the Los Angeles Times was not expressing presidential support, telling supporters on Tuesday: “Even her fellow Californians know she is not ready for the job. The Times Kamala previously endorsed Kamala in her races for California attorney general in 2010 and 2014, as well as her race for the U.S. Senate in 2016 — but not this time.
“Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state — and still one of the largest in the country — refused to endorse a race that was so important,” Garza wrote. “It makes us cowardly and hypocritical, maybe even a little sexist and racist. How can we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country, and then fail to support the perfectly decent Democratic challenger – who we previously supported for the US Senate?
On Wednesday, Semafor reported that the failure to approve appeared to cost the financially struggling Los Angeles Times some of its subscribers. “Unsubscribes were twice as high yesterday as on Monday,” and “nearly 400 subscribers cited ‘editorial content’ as the reason for unsubscribing,” Semafor’s Maxwell Tani reported.
