(Headline USA) The editorial editor for the Los Angeles Times quit in protest after the newspaper’s owner blocked a decision to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Mariel Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
Garza’s resignation followed the news this week that Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire doctor who purchased the Los Angeles Times in 2018 for $500 million, shot down the Times editorial board’s attempt to endorse Harris.
This will be the first election cycle since 2004 in which the Times has not endorsed a candidate.
In a social media post, Soon-Shiong explained he offered the editorial board the chance 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.”
So many comments about the @latimes Editorial Board not providing a Presidential endorsement this year. Let me clarify how this decision came about.
The Editorial Board was provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH…
— Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong (@DrPatSoonShiong) October 23, 2024
“With this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years,” he wrote. “Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”
The non-endorsement of Harris is a blow to the Democrat, who began her political career in California, where the paper is based.
Garza alleged Soon-Shiong’s decision not to endorse Harris amounted to greater political interference than if he had just allowed the editorial board to throw its support behind her.
“This is a point in time where you speak your conscience no matter what,” Garza told CJR. “And an endorsement was the logical next step after a series of editorials we’ve been writing about how dangerous Trump is to democracy, about his unfitness to be president, about his threats to jail his enemies.”
