Two more LA Times editorial staff resign after paper withholds Harris endorsement
4 mins read

Two more LA Times editorial staff resign after paper withholds Harris endorsement

Kaneb0

Los Angeles – Two more members of the Los Angeles Times editorial board have resigned after the paper’s owners blocked the board’s plan to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

Veteran journalists Robert Greene and Karin Klein announced their resignations Thursday, a day after editorial page editor Mariel Garza left in protest over LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s decision not to endorse a candidate.

Greene, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, said in a statement shared with the Columbia Journalism Review that he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision not to endorse Harris.

“I realize that is the owner’s decision to make,” he wrote. “But it hurt especially because one of the candidates, Donald Trump, has shown such hostility to principles central to journalism — respect for the truth and reverence for democracy.”

Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review that she resigned because the Times was silent on the presidential election in “dangerous times.”

“I’m resigning because I want to make it clear that I’m not okay with us being silent,” Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people must stand up. That’s how I stand up.”

Garza said the board intended to support Harris and that she had drafted a proposed leader, but it was blocked by Soon-Shiong.

A newsroom operates separately from the newsroom, and the job of its writers is to present an issue and then take sides and present arguments to defend it.

Editorial writer Tony Barboza, who remains on the editorial board, said in a post Friday on an internal Los Angeles Times message board that the board had planned a series of editorials that would have culminated Sunday with a Harris endorsement.

“Everything was killed,” he wrote. “I am deeply troubled to see these facts mischaracterized, and that the owner’s decision not to approve this follow-up race was blamed on his employees.”

Soon-Shiong said in a post on social media platform X that the board was asked to do a fact-finding of Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump’s policies during their time in the White House.

Soon-Shiong, who bought the paper in 2018 and is a member of the editorial board, said the board “chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”

Greene, who has written on water, drought and Los Angeles County government among other topics, said he was also troubled by Soon-Shiong’s claim that the editorial board had chosen to remain silent.

Green wrote that a policy analysis must be done by the newspaper’s news page and that the purpose of an editorial is “to take a position and defend it persuasively.”

“I left in response to the refusal to take a stand and to the false claim that the editors had made a choice,” Green wrote.

Klein said in a statement on Facebook that her decision to resign also came after seeing Soon-Shiong’s post on X.

“The decision to resign was made simple and easy when he posted on X yesterday about his proposal that the board create a pros and cons analysis of each candidate and let voters make their own decisions,” she wrote.

“The news site does an excellent job of neutral analysis. It’s not an editorial,” she added.

In an interview with Spectrum News on Thursday, Soon-Shiong pushed back against criticism that he censored the editorial.

“As the owner, I’m on the editorial board, and I shared with our editors that maybe this year we’ll have a column, a page, two pages, if we want, with all the pros and cons and let the readers decide,” Soon-Shiong said.

He said he feared supporting a candidate would further divide the country.

“I want us to desperately air all the voices on the opinion side, on the oped side,” Soon-Shiong said. “I don’t know how (readers) view me or our family as ‘ultra progressive’ or not, but I’m an independent.”

Website https://carnevalestoricocivitonico.it

Related Posts