The daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong has made explicit what she only implied two days earlier, claiming on Saturday that the paper’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris was axed over Harris’ stance surrounding the ongoing war in Gaza. But soon after, her father essentially said she’s lying.
“Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process,” Soon-Shiong’s daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, who is not a formal employee member at the paper said in a statement to The New YorkTimes, “As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.”
On Saturday, a spokesperson for Soon-Shiong reportedly said Nika is “not involved. Her words do not represent the family of the L.A. Times,” adding that the paper’s choice isn’t connected to Gaza and that Nika’s words are “her opinion.”
On Thursday, Nika Soon-Shiong strongly implied in a meandering social media thread that the decision to kill the Harris endorsement was connected to Gaza. Those and her latest incendiary remarks only add fuel to the fire engulfing the LA Times as readers and employees revolt against the unprecedented interference in editorial independence.
That decision — to kill not only the endorsement of Harris but also a planned series connected to it that laid out the case against Donald Trump — has sparked an existential crisis for the 142-year-old paper. Alongside a spike in subscription cancelations and outspoken subscriber outrage, several high profile staffers have resigned in protest — and then there was an open letter signed by 200 newsroom staffers.
In that letter, published Friday afternoon, LA Times employees called on Soon-Shiong and top editor Terry Tang to stop ignoring the story, stop blaming the editorial board for the scandal, and to “restore trust” with readers.
“The Times has undermined [readers’] trust with its handling of the non-endorsement and the reaction that followed,” the letter, signed by 200 LA Times staff members, said in part.
Soon after the letter was published, the Times finally reported on the matter via an interview with Soon-Shiong in which he stood by his decision despite the turmoil it created.
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