Resignation at LA Times Over Blocked Political Endorsement
The editorial director at The Los Angeles Times, Mariel Garza, has resigned after the paper’s billionaire owner halted the endorsement of Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination in the upcoming 2024 election, which is just around the corner. Garza, who had been a member of the Times‘ editorial board for almost ten years, submitted her resignation following a report by Semafor that Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the newspaper, had vetoed the endorsement.
Historically, the editorial board at The Los Angeles Times has supported the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 2008, including endorsing Joe Biden against Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Garza’s Resignation Letter Highlights Concerns
In her letter to Terry Tang, the executive editor, Garza expressed that the decision to abstain from endorsing a presidential candidate in what she described as “the most consequential election in a generation” portrays the newspaper as “craven and hypocritical, and possibly sexist and racist.” She questioned how the board could criticize Trump’s administration for eight years but then not support “the perfectly decent Democrat challenger,” who had previously been endorsed by the board for the U.S. Senate.
Garza stressed that this non-endorsement could damage the credibility of the editorial board, affecting all levels of endorsements from the presidential race down to local school boards. She argued that it would cause the public to question whether these were truly journalistic decisions or merely dictated by the owner.
In her resignation, Garza wrote, “Seven years ago, we called out Donald Trump in our series ‘Our Dishonest President’ saying, ‘Men and women of conscience can no longer withhold judgment. Trump’s erratic nature and his impulsive, demagogic style endanger us all.’ I still stand by that today. In these perilous times, staying silent is not just indifference, it is complicity. I am standing up by stepping down. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately.”
During an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Garza reiterated her stance, saying, “In perilous times, honest individuals must stand up. This is my way of standing up.”
Background on the Non-Endorsement Decision
Earlier in the week, Semafor reported that the decision not to endorse in the upcoming presidential election on November 5 was directly from Soon-Shiong, who acquired the paper in 2018 for $500 million. According to Max Tani of Semafor, this wasn’t the first instance of Soon-Shiong overturning the editorial board’s decisions. In 2020, after interviews with Democratic presidential candidates and deciding to endorse Elizabeth Warren in the primary, Soon-Shiong intervened at the last minute to prevent any endorsement in the primary (though the paper later endorsed Biden in the general election).
In response to criticism, Soon-Shiong stated in a social media post that the editorial board was tasked with creating a factual analysis of the positive and negative policies from each candidate during their terms, which critics argued misses the point of an editorial. He insisted this approach provided clear and non-partisan information, helping readers make their own decision about the candidates.
John Mecklin, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, responded by calling Soon-Shiong’s statement “the most clueless, beside-the-point gibberish” he’s seen in his four decades in journalism. Frederick Deknatel, executive editor of Democracy in Exile, also chimed in, highlighting the disconnect between billionaire owners and the journalistic values of the organizations they own.
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