L.A. Times editorial editor quits after owner blocks plans to endorse Harris
The Los Angeles Times editorials editor resigned Wednesday after the publication's owner reportedly decided against making an official presidential endorsement -- specifically for Vice President Harris -- this year.
"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," Mariel Garza said in a phone call, per the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR).
Garza highlighted two concerns in her phone call with the CJR.
"But two things concern me: 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 told the CJR.
She added that readers would think it's "possibly suspicious" that the paper, which flipped Democratic with its 2008 endorsement of former President Obama, didn't endorse Harris.
In her resignation letter, which CJR published in the article, Garza said she had grappled with the paper's decision not to endorse Harris until she realized it mattered to her.
"Of course, it matters that the largest newspaper in the state—and one of the largest in the nation still—declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won't even be straight with people about it," Garza wrote, per CJR.
However, L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, pushed back on Garza's claims in a Wednesday post on the social platform X, saying the editorial board had been "provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis" of Harris and Trump's positive and negative policy decisions and how they impacted the country while at the White House.
The board was also asked to provide its understanding of the policies mentioned in the candidates' current campaigns and any of their potential impacts, Soon-Shiong added in the post.
"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 wrote. "Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent, and I accepted their decision. Please #vote."
On Wednesday night, the Los Angeles Times Guild issued a statement saying Soon-Shiong was "unfairly assigning blame" for the decision not to endorse.
"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," the Guild's Unit Council and Bargaining Committee said in the post, adding that they are "pressing for answers from newsroom management."
"The Los Angeles Times Guild stands with our members who have always worked diligently to protect the integrity of our newsroom," the statement said.