For the first time since the story broke, the Los Angeles Times has published coverage of the growing scandal over owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s decision to spike a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris — by interviewing Soon-Shiong, who insists nothing is wrong.
In the interview, published Friday evening shortly after LA Times staffers posted an open letter calling out management for ignoring the story, Soon-Shiong said he has “no regrets whatsoever” about the matter. “In fact, I think it was exactly the right decision.”
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 is of course the open letter.
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.
The issue, the letter argues, isn’t whether or not the LA Times should endorse anyone. Instead, it’s that the publication’s leadership hid the decision from staff and from readers and — until the interview with Soon-Shiong — had not allowed the paper’s journalists to cover it.
The letter also specifically called out Soon-Shiong’s dissembling statement earlier this week that, as Times staffers wrote, “publicly blamed the members of the Editorial Board for his decision not to endorse, saying incorrectly that ‘they chose to remain silent.’ They did not. They planned an endorsement — one that was rejected. The owner’s action unnecessarily made Editorial Board members vulnerable to harassment, impacting their ability to effectively perform their jobs.”
The letter also notes that the scandal has been extensively reported on by competitor outlets including the New York Times, Semafor and others, while as of Friday morning nothing had appeared on the LA Times in print or online.
The paper “has also not explained to its readers or staff why it issued no endorsement in the presidential race,” the letter added.
On Wednesday, Editorial Editor Mariel Garza resigned in protest over Soon-Shiong’s interference with the paper’s editorial freedom. She was joined on Thursday by two longtime LA Times editorial writers — Karin Klein, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Greene. Klein and Garza both specifically cited the matter in resignation statements.
Nevertheless, speaking to LA Times staff writer James Rainey, Soon-Shiong insisted he doesn’t understand any of this. “I’m disappointed by the editorial [board] members resigning the way they did. But that’s their choice, right?”
“Is this just groupthink, brainwashing or what, on either side? I think we stand for more than that. We should be an organization that stands up and says the facts,” the billionaire continued. Rainey characterized this comment as referring to some notion of ideological fairness.
“I think that the country needs that desperately,” Soon-Shiong said also.
Meanwhile, the staff letter demands that LA Times leadership “thoroughly cover this story so that readers fully understand what transpired,” explain to readers why the endorsement was canceled and provide “clarity about the broader endorsement process,” and retract the false statements made about the Editorial Board and make it clear they “wanted to write an endorsement and did not choose to remain silent.”
The interview with Soon-Shiong remains as of this writing the paper’s only coverage of the scandal. Leadership has still not provided any specific clarity to readers, nor has Soon-Shiong retracted his false characterization of the editorial board’s role in the canceled Harris endorsement.
Meanwhile, according to the Times’ own coverage, thousands of subscribers — including actor Mark Hamill — have canceled their subscriptions since the story became public.
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