Three LA Times Editorial Staffers Quit In Protest After Owner Vetoed Kamala Harris Endorsement
(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
Three key editorial board members at the Los Angeles Times resigned this week in protest of the owner’s refusal to allow the newspaper to endorse Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris as its 2024 presidential candidate of choice.
Biotech billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the paper in 2018, blocked the board’s planned endorsement, breaking the newspaper’s run of having endorsed a candidate in every presidential election since 2008.
The veto sparked immediate backlash from the board.
Editorials editor Mariel Garza was first to leave in protest on Wednesday, denouncing Soon-Shiong’s stance.
In response, Soon-Shiong defended his decision as an effort to keep the paper “less divisive” in an already polarized climate. He said that, instead of an outright endorsement, he had suggested the board detail the policy differences between Harris and Republican nominee former President Donald Trump to allow readers to decide.
By Thursday, two more board members joined Garza in walking out, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Robert Greene and education and environment editor Karin Klein.
In a resignation letter, Greene wrote: “I recognize that it is the owner’s decision to make. But it hurt particularly because one of the candidates, Donald Trump, has demonstrated such hostility to principles that are central to journalism-respect for the truth and reverence for democracy.”
Klein took to Facebook to offer her take: “I respect the owner’s right to interfere with editorials; that is one place where he ethically can do so. What steams me is that a decision against an editorial at this point is actually a decision to do an editorial – a wordless one, a make-believe-invisible one that unfairly implies that [Harris] has grievous faults that somehow put her on a level with Donald Trump.”
In further push back against Soon-Shiong over 1,700 readers have canceled their subscriptions to the newspaper, including Star Wars actor Mark Hamill.
In response, in a Thursday interview with Spectrum News 1 SoCal, Soon-Shiong blasted those canceling of adding “to the demise, frankly, of democracy and the fourth estate.”
