Los Angeles Times editorials editor resigns after owner blocks presidential endorsement
By: Terry Tang (Columbia Journalism Review)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
October 23, 2024BySewell Chanab
Mariel Garza, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned on Wednesday, after the newspaper's owner had blocked the editorial board's plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
"I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent," Garza told me in a phone conversation. "In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I'm standing up."
On October 11, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper for $500 million in 2018, informed the paper's editorial board that the Times would not be making an endorsement for president. The message was conveyed to Garza by Terry Tang, the paper's editor.
The board had intended to endorse Harris, Garza told me, and she had drafted the outline of a proposed editorial. She had hoped to get feedback on the outline and was taken aback upon being told that the newspaper would not take a position.
"I didn't think we were going to change our readers' minds—our readers, for the most part, are Harris supporters," Garza told me. "We're a very liberal paper. I didn't think we were going to change the outcome of the election in California.
"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."
So why was an endorsement needed?
"It was a logical next step," Garza told me. "And it's perplexing to readers, and possibly suspicious, that we didn't endorse her this time."
Indeed, hours after Semafor reported on Tuesday that Soon-Shiong had blocked the endorsement, former president Donald Trump's rapid-response team sent out an email calling the newspaper's decision "the latest blow" for Harris.
"In Kamala's own home state, the Los Angeles Times—the state's largest newspaper—has declined to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket, despite endorsing the Democrat nominees in every election for decades," the campaign said. "Even her fellow Californians know she's not up for the job. The Times previously endorsed Kamala in her 2010 and 2014 races for California attorney general, as well as her 2016 race for US Senate—but not this time."
(As is all too common, the Trump campaign got a fact wrong: the Timesendorsed Republican Steve Cooley, not Harris, for attorney general in 2010.)
The Times was historically a Republican newspaper. It endorsed the GOP nominee in every election from its founding, in 1881, through Richard M. Nixon's reelection campaign in 1972. By then, however, Southern California, in many ways the birthplace of modern conservatism, was becoming more politically diverse; the newspaper's staff, thanks to heavy investment from the Chandler family that owned the paper, was growing in size and ambition. After Watergate, the 1972 endorsement was seen as an embarrassment. From 1976 through 2004, the Times did not endorse any candidate for president.
That changed in 2008, when the paper endorsed Barack Obama—the first Democratic nominee for president to win its support. It went on to endorse the Democratic nominee in 2012, 2016, and 2020.
I was the newspaper's editorial page editor in 2020 and 2021, and presided over the board's endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020. Months earlier, before I took the job, Soon-Shiong had stopped the editorial board from making an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary. (The board wanted to support Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.) Internal tension over that decision played a role in the departure of my predecessor, Nicholas Goldberg.
I have deep respect for the Soon-Shiong family, who rescued the paper from the doomed and recently bankrupt Tribune Company. He's a decent and thoughtful person, and as the owner of the paper, it is ultimately up to him to set the editorial direction. I worked well with Soon-Shiong during my time running the opinion section, and when I left the Times to edit the nonprofit Texas Tribune, in 2021, it was on good terms.
Still, I believe Soon-Shiong could have better communicated his intentions—both in 2020 and now—and I worry that his decision has set off unnecessary speculation that California's largest newspaper has serious doubts about Harris, who was formerly the state's attorney general and then junior US senator.
While it's reasonable to raise questions about how useful presidential endorsements are—and the outcome of the election in California is in little doubt—the Times' assessment would have carried more weight than other publications', because Harris is the first major-party nominee from California since Ronald Reagan.
Owning a newspaper carries great public responsibility. In my view, media proprietors should hire leaders they trust and then let them exercise their judgment. If the aim here was to insulate the Times from accusations of political bias, it seems this intervention may have had the opposite effect. Numerous staffers have told me about how pained, even embarrassed, they felt after Trump used the Times to score a political point.
Garza, who is fifty-seven, is an outstanding and upstanding journalist. She joined the Los Angeles Times in 2015 from the Sacramento Bee, where she had been deputy editorial page editor. I promoted her to deputy editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times in 2021. After I left the paper, Terry Tang, who had run the op-ed section, succeeded me. In April, after Tang was named the editor of the paper, following the resignation of Kevin Merida, Garza was promoted to editorials editor.
"Terry is not to blame," Garza told me.
The text of Garza's resignation letter is below:
Terry,
Ever since Dr. Soon-Shiong vetoed the editorial board's plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president, I have been struggling with my feelings about the implications of our silence.
I told myself that presidential endorsements don't really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many "Trump is unfit" editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her.
But the reality hit me like cold water Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from the LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.
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.
It makes us 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?
The non-endorsement undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through decree by the owner.
Seven years ago, the editorial board wrote this in its series about Donald Trump "Our Dishonest President": "Men and women of conscience can no longer withhold judgment. Trump's erratic nature and his impulsive, demagogic style endanger us all."
I still believe that's true.
In these dangerous times, staying silent isn't just indifference, it is complicity. I'm standing up by stepping down from the editorial board. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately.
Mariel
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The Times consistently publishes endorsements of candidates and propositions. If there is a rational reason not to also endorse a presidential candidate, I would sure like to know what it is.
Either their owner does not want to get into the endorsement game anymore or they believe that neither candidate is worthy of being endorsed by them.
Simple explanation.
Except that they already endorse candidates in other races.
Except that they have already published several editorials ripping Trump.
So it’s neither.
Did it ever dawn on you that Harris is that bad that no one wants to be tied to her.
Did absurdity ever dawn me? Why should it?
I’m sorry, but did you read the seed? The thread? The same paper already endorsed her in previous elections. If they felt that neither candidate was worthy of an endorsement, they could say that. But they haven’t said that.
It’s also ridiculous. Are people not supposed to choose one? You’re going to write dozens of anti-Trump articles, a similar level of pro-Harris articles, and then not endorse Harris? Make some sense.
As the editor says, the Trump campaign is using the abscense of an LA Times endorsement of Harris to claim she would not have been the choice. The editorial board editor says otherwise.
They’d be foolish not to. It’s bullshit, but it’s still a softball begging to be smashed.
Maybe the LA Times doesn't want to endorse a Marxist.
Because Marxism is an actual problem we face. /s
I don’t think you know what Marxism is, or what Harris’s beliefs and policies are, and how they could possibly relate to each other. You just call her Marxist because that’s the name-calling the Right does for the Left. It’s actually pointless name-calling, because I’d bet 99% of Trump supporters couldn’t even define Marxism and connect it to Harris any more than you can.
You might as well just call her “Godzilla,” because it’s just about preying on irrational fears, and it doesn’t matter if any of it is real.
You’re welcome to try to prove me wrong, though.
First, they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Martin Niemöller
The owner is just another uber rich guy who doesnt care about the future of America, as long as all is well for him and his investments.
Honestly, does anyone really care whether a newspaper endorses someone or not. This is much like a celebrity or sports figure endorsing someone. No one pays attention.
If someone need someone to tell them who to vote for, then maybe they should not be voting in the first place.
Folks like those, who have, don't give a shit about the have nots. Filthy peasants!
I doubt it would have any impact on this particular race. It well could given more moderate candidates. I do think it has an impact on state/local races and propositions/initiatives.
I think you have that backward; he does care about the future of America which is why he didn't endorse Harris.
By that same logic, he cares about the future of America which is why he didn't endorse Trump.
The reality is this guy was likely just playing the odds by not wanting to upset any of his Trump supporter readers even though the vast majority of the readership are Harris supporters, and he knows the endorsement won't have ANY effect on the outcome of the election because there is exactly ZERO chance that California's electoral college votes will go for Trump. They are guaranteed to go for Harris. As stated in the article above:
She knew the editorial boards endorsement wasn't going to change anything, she and the others just wanted to stand up and be counted as being on the right side of history, to proclaim openly what every rational American with more than half a brain knows, that dishonest Donald is a dangerous unhinged convicted felon and known sexual predator and it monumentally unfit for the office of President.
Major newspapers write editorials every single day. But not one on the election choice? Pretty disgraceful.