OAN Staff Blake Wolf
2:17 PM – Thursday, October 24, 2024
The Los Angeles Times editor, Mariel Garza, announced her resignation on Wednesday due to the publication’s owner refusing to officially endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
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“I am 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,” Garza stated, according to the Columbia Journalism Review.
The publication has endorsed a Democrat for president in every election since former President Barack Obama first ran in 2008, which the editorial board planned to do again this year. However, the owner soon stepped in and blocked the opportunity for any official endorsement.
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the publication, purchased the outlet in 2018, in addition to the San Diego Union-Tribune, acquiring both for around $500 million.
Although Garza claims that the decision to endorse Harris was blocked by Soon-Shiong himself, he stated that the whole board “chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”
Soon-Shiong continued in an X post, stating that the editorial board was tasked with providing “a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies each 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,” Soon-Shiong added.
Internal tension has been building within the LA Times following Soon-Shiong’s acquisition, which boiled over resulting in Garza’s decision to resign, calling the non-endorsement “perplexing” and “suspicious.”
“I didn’t think we were going to change our readers’ minds–our readers, for the most part, are Harris supporters,” she stated. “We’re a very liberal paper. I didn’t think we were going to change the outcome of the election in California.”
Garza continued, adding that she believes a non-endorsement makes the publication “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.”
“This is a point in time where you speak your conscience no matter what. 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. We have made the case in editorial after editorial that he shouldn’t be reelected,” she stated.
The Los Angeles Times Guild Unit Council and Bargaining Committee also released a statement responding to Soon-Shiong’s decision.
“We are deeply concerned about our owner’s decision to block a planned endorsement in the presidential race. We are even more concerned that he is now 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. The Los Angeles Times Guild stands with our members who have always worked diligently to protect the integrity of our newsroom,” the statement read.
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