The editor of the Los Angeles Times opinion section has resigned from her post after the newspaper’s owner prevented the editorial board from endorsing a candidate for president.
Mariel Garza, editor of the illustrious newspaper’s editorials, resigned in protest of the decision by Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Times, to block the editorial staff from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review in a phone interview with her former colleague Sewell Chan. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
The Los Angeles Times, like other major publications across the country, have long been looked to for guidance in complex political issues at both the local and national levels. It has endorsed a presidential candidate every election since 2008 after abstaining from the practice for decades after it endorsed Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal.
The decision to skip a presidential endorsement in the upcoming November General Election, was made by Soon-Shiong, who purchased the newspaper for $500 million in 2018, according to Semafor, which broke the story last week.
Soon-Shiong’s tenure as the owner of the Times has been mired with controversy, including layoff concerns and tense negotiations with union staffers. Former Times employees have also accused the paper’s owner of meddling in newsroom decisions in the past, including preventing the editorial staff from endorsing Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Democratic Primary.
Despite knowing that a Los Angeles Times endorsement likely wouldn’t sway any voters in a deep Blue state like California, compounded with the fact that Harris is the first presidential candidate in the state since Ronald Reagan, Garza said she believed she still had a duty “speak [her] conscience no matter what.”
“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,” she said. “We have made the case in editorial after editorial that he shouldn’t be reelected.”
The newspaper’s lack of endorsement was immediately capitalized on by the campaign of former President Donald Trump, who cited it as an example Harris not being “up for the job.”
Saying he had a great deal of respect for Soon-Shiong, who saved the Los Angeles Times when it was on the brink of going under, Chan said the owner’s interference needed to be communicated better as it may have created “unnecessary speculation that California’s largest newspaper has serious doubts about Harris.”
