L.A. Times editor quits after owner blocks Harris endorsement
KIRBY LEE-USA TODAY SPORTS
A general overall view of a newspaper rack outside of Times Mirror Square and the Los Angeles Times building, in February 2018. The head of the Los Angeles Times’ editorial board resigned Wednesday after the paper’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Stay updated on Hawaii and national elections coverageThe head of the Los Angeles Times’ editorial board resigned Wednesday after the paper’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris.
In an interview with The Columbia Journalism Review, Mariel Garza, who held the title editorials editor, said she had quit because “I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
Garza said the editorial board had planned to endorse Harris, but Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, decided this month that the newspaper would not make any endorsement for president. The paper did not explain to readers why it was not issuing an endorsement.
Garza submitted her resignation letter to the paper’s executive editor, Terry Tang, who oversees both the newsroom and the opinion department. Tang came to the paper after previously serving as an editor at The New York Times for 20 years.
Soon-Shiong, who bought the Los Angeles Times in 2018 for $500 million, pushed back on Garza’s version of events. In a social media post Wednesday, he said that the editorial board had not followed through on a directive to “draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.”
“With this clear and nonpartisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years,” he said. “Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”
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Garza responded to Soon-Shiong in a text to The New York Times, saying: “What he outlines in that tweet is not an endorsement, or even an editorial.”
The Los Angeles Times’ union leadership said in a statement Wednesday night that they were “deeply concerned” about Soon-Shiong’s decision on the endorsement.
“We are even more concerned that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse,” the Los Angeles Times Guild said.
The Los Angeles Times has endorsed a Democrat for president in every election cycle since 2008. This year it has made a series of endorsements in state, city and county races.
Semafor first reported that the Los Angeles Times was skipping this year’s presidential endorsement.
Garza, who joined the paper’s editorial board in 2015, was appointed editorials editor in April.
In her resignation letter, which The Columbia Journalism Review published in full, Garza said it mattered that the largest newspaper in California declined to endorse “in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it.”
“It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist,” she wrote. “How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country, and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger — who we previously endorsed for the U.S. Senate?”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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