Bad Times

Yesterday, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the paper in 2018 for $500 million, reprehensibly blocked the editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris for President of the United States.

Mariel Garza, the editorials editor for the paper, quit later that day.

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

The editorial board had written an outline of the endorsement of VP Harris had intended to endorse Harris, and sent it up the chain to get feedback.  That’s when she was told that the Times wouldn’t be publishing an endorsement.

Putting aside what an abrogation of journalistic responsibility this is by the paper’s billionaire owner – it’s also inexplicably stupid.  Not only is the Los Angeles Times a fairly liberal paper, but Kamala Harris is going to win California by a landslide.  She’s beating Trump in the polls by 24 points!  An endorsement of Kamala Harris wasn’t likely to change many minds about the readers,   And news of the endorsement wasn’t going to affect the results – at all -- in the state.

But – what Soon-Shiong’s disgraceful action does do is draw far more attention to the editorial board’s intention to endorse VP Harris than the published endorsement ever would have gotten.  It’s already been written about by the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Newsweek, CNN, NPR, Axios, the Daily Beast, The Hill, Yahoo! News, Deadline, the Columbia Journalism Review and much more, including numerous TV stations across the state.  I’m certain more newspapers across the country will be writing about it, as news of the editor’s resignation (which only occurred two hours before writing this article) spreads.

In fact, how problematic is this for the paper?  In Los Angeles magazine's endorsement of Kamala Harris, which came following the breaking of this story, they wrote, “Trump represents an existential threat to everything we love about Los Angeles…Unlike the LA Times, I don’t want any ambiguity where we stand. Silence is complicity.”

And beyond spreading word of the intended endorsement far wider than it would have gone otherwise, it also spreads news of billionaires trying to shut down Freedom of the Press (along with Trump threatening to sue CBS for airing an interview he didn’t like) and buying the election (including Elon Musk offering to pay $1 million a day to a “raffle” winner among those who sign a petition for his PAC – for which he just received a cease-and-desist letter from the Department of Justice).

Furthermore, at some point the Los Angeles Times itself is going to have to write about the story.  After all, it’s one thing for ownership to impact its opinion in editorials – it’s another entirely to start directing the news.  At the moment, Wednesday afternoon, as I write this [NOTE: And Thursday morning as I double-checked the paper], there is no mention of the decision and resignation in the paper.  I’m sure there will be -- it's clearly a dicey, awkward subject for the paper, and they're likely trying to figure out to best cover it.  In the meantime, though, they're getting scooped by everyone.  If they don’t end up covering it at all, however, that would end up being an even bigger scandal.  And probably start losing subscribers (if it hasn’t already), which affects ad rates. They have, at least, published many utterly scathing Letters to the Editor. And one in support of the owner's decision -- I'm guessing from a Trump voter.

(For what it’s worth, I haven’t cancelled mine yet.  I look forward to how the news side eventually covers the story.  And the editorial page, as well.)

And when the news division does write about the ownership decision and resignation (because they have to or lose all credibility) -- it will likely have to include that the paper was going to endorse Kamala Harris and had even written the first draft!  So, the endorsement will get in the paper anyway.

Meanwhile, if Soon-Shiong had just done…nothing – the Los Angeles Times would have endorsed Kamala Harris to its mostly liberal readers in a state she’s outpolling Trump by 24 points, and it would have evoked a yawn and hardly gone any further.

Editorials editor Garza noted this and the dangers as well.  “I didn’t think we were going to change our readers’ minds—our readers, for the most part, are Harris supporters,” Garza continued.  “We’re a very liberal paper. I didn’t think we were going to change the outcome of the election in California.

“But two things concern me: This is a point in time where you speak your conscience no matter what. And an endorsement was the logical next step after a series of editorials we’ve been writing about how dangerous Trump is to democracy, about his unfitness to be president, about his threats to jail his enemies. We have made the case in editorial after editorial that he shouldn’t be reelected.”

The story, of course, was picked up by the Trump campaign.  What I find hilarious and tone deaf is their total cluelessness about what the story actually is, calling the newspaper’s decision “the latest blow” for Harris.

“In Kamala’s own home state, the Los Angeles Times—the state’s largest newspaper—has declined to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket, despite endorsing the Democrat nominees in every election for decades,” the campaign wrote. “Even her fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job.”

First of all, as I noted, “her fellow Californians” have her leading Trump in the polls by 24%.  It’s hard to imagine anyone other than the most ignorant of Trump supporters who would think she won’t swamp him in the state.  Second, the story is very clear that it wasn’t the newspaper that decided this, but the billionaire owner blocking his own paper’s freedom of speech.

That is the story.  That is the clear story.  And I’m guessing that pretty much everyone gets it.  Easily.  For the Trump campaign to put blinders on and think or just try to convince the public (since I’m not sure “thinking” was involved here) that this is a “blow” to her campaign – rather than a story that brings freedom of the press and fascism to the forefront, while driving news of the written Harris-endorsement (and resignation of the editor) so much farther than it ever would have gone, which Trump’s campaign themselves are helping spread – is chuckle-headed incompetence at its most core.  And pure Trumpian:  believing that just because you say something insanely stupid to be negative, most people will accept it as true.  Indeed, I’m sure most Republicans planning to vote for Trump think the Los Angeles Times wasn’t planning to endorse Kamala Harris.  But they now will hear a story about a billionaire censoring his own editorial board and will hear about the planned endorsement – and will also hear it all put in context of MAGOP fascism spreading further in country.

In the end, what I would love is for the Los Angeles Times to write an editorial explaining that they will not be publishing an endorsement for President of the United States because the owner didn’t want them to.  And so they will not be printing an endorsement of Kamala Harris that had been outlined and sent to the billionaire owner for his approval.

That’s not going to happen.  I know.  But I’d still love it.

Meanwhile, word of the intended endorsement has already gotten out.  And by the time this is posted, it might have even made the Los Angeles Times front page.