Two more LA Times editorial board members resign after the paper withholds a Harris endorsement

By The Associated Press

Los Angeles Times editorials editor Mariel Garza poses for a portrait in 2022. (Ricardo DeAratanha/Los Angeles Times via AP)[ASSOCIATED PRESS/Ricardo DeAratanha]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two more members of the Los Angeles Times editorial board have resigned after the newspaper’s owner blocked the board’s plan to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

Veteran journalists Robert Greene and Karin Klein announced their resignations Thursday, a day after the editorial page editor Mariel Garza left in protest over LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s decision not to endorse a candidate.

Greene, a Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial writing, said in a statement shared with the Columbia Journalism Review that he was “deeply disappointed” in the decision not to endorse Harris.

“I recognize that it is the owner’s decision to make,” he wrote. “But it hurt particularly because one of the candidates, Donald Trump, has demonstrated such hostility to principles that are central to journalism — respect for the truth and reverence for democracy.”

Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review that she resigned because the Times was remaining silent on the presidential race in “dangerous times.”

This undated image provided by the Los Angeles Times shows Karin Klein, a Los Angeles Times board member who writes editorials about education, environment, food and science. Klein who is one of two editors who have left the Los Angeles Times after the newspaper's owner blocked the editorial board's plans to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president. (Los Angeles Times via AP)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

Garza said the board had intended to endorse Harris and that she had drafted the outline of a proposed editorial but that was blocked by Soon-Shiong.

An LA Times spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

An editorial board operates separately from the newsroom, and its writers’ job is to present an issue and then take a side and lay out arguments to defend it.

Editorial writer Tony Barboza, who remains on the editorial board, said in a post Friday on an internal Los Angeles Times message board that the board had planned a series of editorials that would have culminated on Sunday with a Harris endorsement.

“All of it was killed,” he wrote. “I am deeply disturbed to see these facts mischaracterized, and the owner’s decision not to endorse in this consequential race blamed on his employees.”

Soon-Shiong said in a post on the social media platform X that the board was asked to do a factual analysis of the policies of Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump during their time at the White House.

Soon-Shiong, who bought the paper in 2018 and is a member of the editorial board, said the board “chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”

Greene, who wrote about water, drought, and Los Angeles County government, among other topics, said he was also concerned with Soon-Shiong’s assertion that the editorial board had chosen to stay silent.

Greene wrote that a policy analysis would have to be done by the paper’s news side and that the purpose of an editorial board is “to take a stand and defend it persuasively.”

“I left in response to the refusal to take a stand, and to the incorrect assertion that the editorial board had made a choice,” Greene wrote.

Klein said in a statement posted on Facebook that her decision to resign also came after seeing Soon-Shiong’s post on X.

“The decision to resign was made simple and easy when he posted on X yesterday about his suggestion that the board create an analysis of the positives and negatives of each candidate and let the voters make their own decisions,” she wrote.

“News side does an excellent job of neutral analysis. That’s not an editorial,” she added.

In an interview with Spectrum News on Thursday, Soon-Shiong pushed back against criticism that he censored the editorial board.

“As an owner, I’m on the editorial board and I shared with our editors that maybe this year we have a column, a page, two pages, if we want, of all the pros and all the cons and let the readers decide,” Soon-Shiong said.

He said he feared endorsing a candidate would add to the country’s division.

“I want us desperately to air all the voices on the opinion side, on the op-ed side,” Soon-Shiong said. “I don’t know how (readers) look upon me or our family as ‘ultra progressive’ or not, but I’m an independent.”