Mariel Garza resigned from her position as the Los Angeles Times editorial editor because the publication’s owner didn’t allow the board to make a presidential endorsement.
On October 11, owner Patrick Soon-Shiong told the board they couldn’t make an endorsement.
Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review:
“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.”—“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.”—“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.”
The LA Times didn’t endorse anyone from 1976 to 2004 after it endorsed Nixon in 1972. Watergate embarrassed the publication.
But the newspaper endorsed former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020.
The LA Times endorsed Harris for California attorney general in 2014 and senator in 2016. The board endorsed Republican Steve Cooley for attorney general in 2010.
Soon-Shiong explained on X:
So many comments about the @latimes Editorial Board not providing a Presidential endorsement this year. Let me clarify how this decision came about.The Editorial Board was provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation. In addition, the Board was asked to provide their understanding of the policies and plans enunciated by the candidates during this campaign and its potential effect on the nation in the next four years. 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.Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision. Please #vote.
Garza claimed she did not receive “a request for such an analysis.
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