Alongside its endorsement of Kamala Harris, the Los Angeles Times editorial board had also planned a multi-part series against Donald Trump before the whole thing was quashed by owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, TheWrap has learned.
According to internal memos viewed by TheWrap, the series, tentatively called “The Case Against Trump,” would have ran throughout this week. The endorsement of Kamala Harris would then have been published on Sunday.
However, Soon-Shiong ordered the cancellation 0f the series and the endorsement without explanation, current and now former staffers have confirmed, setting off a massive crisis for the 142-year-old paper.
The South African-American billionaire’s interference in his paper’s editorial independence has sparked a rise in canceled subscriptions and several high profile resignations, and there are also signs of growing unrest among staffers.
On Thursday, editorial writer Karin Klein, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Greene, both quit. They followed Editorial Editor Mariel Garza, who resigned in protest on Wednesday. Both Klein and Garza have specifically cited Soon-Shiong’s actions as the reason for their exits.
The owner “vetoed the editorial board’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president,” Garza said in her resignation letter. And alluding to the fact that the LA Times has endorsed multiple local/state level candidates, she said canceling the Harris 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,” she added.
In a dissembling statement of his own posted Wednesday on the social media site formerly called Twitter, Soon-Shiong blamed the editorial team itself for the lack of an endorsement, yet also essentially confirmed he had in fact shut it down. He said the board “was provided the opportunity” to effectively draw false equivalence between Trump and Harris in op-eds laying out the pros and cons of each candidate.
“Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the editorial board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision,” Soon-Shiong concluded.
“We pitched an endorsement and were not allowed to write one,” Garza shot back in a statement exclusively provided to TheWrap. And Klein, who also called Soon-Shiong a “chickens—,” stated plainly in a note explaining her resignation that “the board was not the one choosing to remain silent. He blocked our voice.”
Since those resignations, Soon-Shiong’s daughter also weighed in with the risible suggestion that quashing the endorsement — which as we now know also included spiking articles that accurately criticized Trump — was somehow related to the war in Gaza.
The Los Angeles Times has not publicly addressed this crisis for readers. TheWrap can confirm that as of this writing, the outlet’s leading editors, Terry Tang and Hector Becerra, haven’t directly addressed the complaints and concerns of staff members either.
So far, the Los Angeles Times Guild is the only institution within the paper that has commented publicly on the matter. “We are deeply concerned about our owner’s decision to block a planned endorsement in the presidential race,” the union said in a statement Wednesday. “We are even more concerned that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse.”
And on Thursday, the Guild reiterated that it remains “concerned” about Soon-Shiong’s actions and is “pressing for answers.” It also urged readers not to cancel their subscriptions, writing, “that subscription underwrites the salaries of hundreds of journalists in our newsroom. Our member-journalists work every day to keep readers informed during these tumultuous times. A healthy democracy is an informed democracy.”
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