LA Times Editor quits over owner's refusal to back Harris

Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, refused to allow its editorial board to endorse Kamala Harris for president, the former editor of the paper's opinion section said on Wednesday.

- Lois Beckett

Mariel Garza, a veteran California journalist who has worked for the Times' editorial board for nearly a decade, resigned from the paper in protest at Soon-Shiong's decision, she told the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR). "In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I'm standing up," Garza said.

Harris is the first presidential nominee from California in any political party since Ronald Reagan.

In a long social media post on X, apparently written in response to Garza's comments, Soon-Shiong wrote that the LA Times' editorial board had rejected a proposed alternative to a typical presidential endorsement editorial, which he described as "a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation".