Los Angeles Times Editorials Editor Resigns Over Owner’s Decision Not To Endorse In Presidential Race; Patrick Soon-Shiong Responds To Backlash
UPDATED, with comment from Times’ owner: After Mariel Garza resigned due to the Times’ owner refusing to allow an endorsement in the presidential race, proprietor Patrick Soon-Shiong took to X in an attempt to quell the resulting online backlash. He said soon after the news broke: “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 candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation. In addition, the Board was asked to provide their understanding of the policies and plans enunciated by the candidates during this campaign and its potential effect on the nation in the next four years. In this way, 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. Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision. Please #vote.”
Meanwhile, the bargaining committee of the Los Angeles Times Guild Unit Council said that it was “deeply concerned about our owner’s decision to block a planned endorsement in the presidential race. We are even more concerned that he is unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse. We are still pressing for answers from newsroom management on behalf of our members.”
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The guild released a further statement warning against readers canceling their subscriptions in protest. “Before you hit the ‘cancel’ button: That subscription underwrites the salaries of hundreds of journalists in our newsroom. Our member-journalists work every day to keep readers informed during these tumultuous times. A healthy democracy is an informed democracy.”
PREVIOUS STORY: The editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times has resigned after the owner of the publication’s owner refused to allow an endorsement in the presidential race.
Mariel Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review that she is “resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Times, informed the editorial board earlier this month that the publication would be making no endorsement in the presidential race. The Times has endorsed each cycle since 2008. According to CJR, the editorial board planned to endorse Kamala Harris.
In her resignation letter, per CJR, Garza wrote that while she had told herself “presidential endorsements don’t really matter,” the “reality bit me like cold water on Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.”
After the news on Tuesday that the Times would not be endorsing, the Trump campaign sent out an email calling the decision the “latest blow to Harris-Walz.” “Even her fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job,” the Trump campaign wrote.
Garza wrote that the decision not to endorse “makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist. 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 US Senate?”
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