Patrick Quickly-Shiong, the billionaire proprietor of the Los Angeles Occasions, is dealing with criticism inside and outdoors of his newspaper since opting to not endorse a candidate within the 2024 presidential race.
Earlier this month, govt editor Terry Tang knowledgeable the editorial board of Quickly-Shiong’s choice that the paper not make an official endorsement this yr, as Semafor reported Tuesday, a break with custom after having backed each Democratic presidential candidate since 2008. Occasions editorials editor Mariel Garza informed Sewell Chan, govt editor of the Columbia Journalism Overview, that the editorial board had intended to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, and that she had already drafted a top level view of the piece.
As soon as information broke that the most important paper in Harris’s dwelling state wouldn’t be endorsing her, Garza, who was promoted to the highest editorial board function in April, penned a scathing resignation letter, calling out the choice to stay “silent” in “harmful instances.”
“It makes us look craven and hypocritical, possibly even a bit sexist and racist,” Garza writes. “How might we spend eight years railing towards [Donald] Trump and the hazard his management poses to the nation after which fail to endorse the peerlessly respectable Democrat challenger—who we beforehand endorsed for the US Senate?”
That endorsement got here in October 2016, a pair weeks after the paper backed Hillary Clinton within the presidential contest towards Trump; the Occasions endorsed Joe Biden in September 2020.
Quickly-Shiong took to social media to make clear his choice for the paper to stay impartial this yr, writing that the board was “offered the chance to draft a factual evaluation of all of the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE insurance policies by EACH candidate throughout their tenures.”
“On this method, with this clear and non-partisan info side-by-side, our readers might determine who can be worthy of being President for the subsequent 4 years,” the Occasions proprietor continued. “As a substitute of adopting this path as prompt, the Editorial Board selected to stay silent and I accepted their choice,” Quickly-Shiong added, putting blame on the ft of the paper’s editorial board. Garza denied to the CJR that she had obtained such a request from the Occasions proprietor.
A spokesperson for the Occasions didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the decision-making course of.
“If the intention right here was to insulate the Occasions from accusations of political bias, it appears this intervention might have had the other impact,” Chan, who beforehand served because the paper’s editorial web page editor, writes. “Quite a few staffers have informed me about how pained, even embarrassed, they felt after Trump used the Occasions to attain a political level.”
