Los Angeles Times editorials editor resigns after paper refuses to endorse Kamala Harris
Mariel Garza, who was also a board member, said the media outlet's decision is "puzzling" and "suspicious."
Los Angeles Times file image
Journalist Mariel Garza, Los Angeles Times editorials editor, resigned Wednesday, after it was revealed that the paper's owner told the editorial board that the media outlet will not be endorsing vice president and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for president.
"I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent," Garza said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review. "In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up."
Garza's resignation comes a day after media outlet Semafor reported that Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, blocked the endorsement that the editorial board was suggesting and planning, an unexpected decision considering the progressive bent of the medium, which had been backing all Democratic candidates since 2008.
According to her byline page, in addition to being the paper's editor-in-chief, Garza also served on its editorial board.
In her conversation with the Columbia Journalism Review, Garza revealed that the board intended to support Harris, and that the former editor herself had already drafted a proposed editorial.
When she expected to receive feedback on the matter, Soon-Shiong surprised her, reporting that the paper would not take a position on the race between Trump and Harris.
This upset Garza, who admitted that the paper has a clear progressive bias, which coincides with her views on Trump.
"I didn’t think we were going to change our readers’ minds—our readers, for the most part, are Harris supporters," Garza said. "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," insisted the now-former editor.
"It was a logical next step," Garza sentenced. "And it’s perplexing to readers, and possibly suspicious, that we didn’t endorse her this time."
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