NON ENDORSEMENTS ENDORSE TRUMP
LA Times Owner Patrick Soon-Shiong ‘Has No Regrets’ About Harris Endorsement Uproar After Staff Protests
Ross A. Lincoln
Fri, October 25, 2024
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.
Read more here, here, here and here.
The post LA Times Owner Patrick Soon-Shiong ‘Has No Regrets’ About Harris Endorsement Uproar After Staff Protests appeared first on TheWrap.
Daughter of Los Angeles Times owner says Harris endorsement was blocked over Gaza war support
The Los Angeles Times building is seen in El Segundo, California
CNN Business · Richard Vogel/AP
Liam Reilly, CNN
Sat, October 26, 2024
The daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong suggested on Saturday that her father’s decision to block the newspaper’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris was made over Harris’ support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Nika Soon-Shiong, a 31-year-old activist who has no official role at the newspaper but has previously been accused of meddling in its coverage, told The New York Times that she and her father made the decision not to endorse Harris.
“Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process,” she said. “As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.”
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire doctor who purchased the Los Angeles Times in 2018 for $500 million, later refuted her comments, saying that she was not involved in the decision.
“Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion, as every community member has the right to do. She does not have any role at the LA Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times,” he said in a statement to CNN.
A representative for Nika Soon-Shiong did not respond to a request for comment.
The comments come days after Patrick Soon-Shiong, in a surprise decision, blocked plans to endorse Harris, igniting outrage within the newspaper and leading to a wave of readers canceling their subscriptions. The newspaper has endorsed a candidate in every presidential election since it backed Barack Obama in 2008.
Three members of the Times’ editorial board resigned over the decision. Mariel Garza, the leader of the newspaper’s editorial board who resigned on Wednesday, told the New York Times she was not given a reason why he refused the endorsement.
“If that was the reason that Dr. Soon-Shiong blocked an endorsement of Kamala Harris, it was not communicated to me or the editorial writers,” Garza said in a statement. “If the family’s goal was to ‘repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children,’ remaining silent did not accomplish that.”
“If the family’s goal was to ‘repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children,’ remaining silent did not accomplish that,” Garza added.
Nika Soon-Shiong’s statement comes a day after she addressed the “controversy and confusion over the LAT’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate,” stating in a social media post that “genocide is the line in the sand.”
“This is not a vote for Donald Trump,” she wrote. This is a refusal to ENDORSE a candidate that is overseeing a war on children. I’m proud of the LA Times’ decision just as I am certain there is no such thing as children of darkness. There is no such thing as human animals.”
In an interview this week, Patrick Soon-Shiong said that he had offered the newspaper’s editorial board the option to elaborate on policy differences between Harris and Trump instead of an endorsement.
“My fear is that if we chose either [candidate] that it would just add to the division,” Soon-Shiong told Spectrum News 1 SoCal.
“I want us desperately to air all the voices on the opinion side, on the op-ed side,” he said. “I don’t know how [readers] look upon me or our family as ‘ultra progressive’ or not, but I’m an independent.”
The Times is not alone in announcing an eleventh-hour reversal on endorsement precedents.
On Friday, The Washington Post shared that it would not endorse a candidate in this or any future presidential election. As with the Times, the decision was handed down by the publisher’s billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the newspaper reported.
The Post has similarly been critiqued for the last-minute about-face.
“To declare a moment of high principle, only 11 days before the election that is just highly suspect that is just not to be believed that this was a matter of principle at this point,” Marty Baron, the Post’s former executive editor, told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on Saturday.
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Washington Post Resignations and Cancellations Begin, Guild Says Bezos Axed Endorsement: ‘Management Interfered’
JD Knapp
Fri, October 25, 2024
The Washington Post Guild condemned Jeff Bezos’ decision Friday not endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in 36 years, news that already prompted at least one top editor to resign and a significant number of canceled subscriptions.
The union’s statement confirmed earlier reports that the decision to end endorsements – in this election, and going forward – came directly from the Amazon boss. The WaPo editorial board already had a Kamala Harris endorsement piece ready to go before it was ultimately nixed.
“We are deeply concerned that The Washington Post — an American news institution in the nation’s capital — would make the decision to no longer endorse presidential candidates, especially a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election,” the guild shared on X. “The role of an editorial board is to do just this: to share opinions on the news impacting our society and culture and endorse candidates to help guide readers.”
Editor at large Robert Kagan has already submitted his resignation from the paper, according to Semafor media writer Max Tani.
“The message from our chief executive, Will Lewis — not from the editorial board itself — makes us concerned that management interfered with the work of our members in editorial. According to our own reporters and guild members, an endorsement for Harris was already drafted, and the decision to not to publish was made by The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos.”
“We are already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers,” the guild concluded. “This decision undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it.”
The controversial move echoes a similar situation unfolding at The Los Angeles Times with its own billionaire leader, Patrick Soon-Shiong.
More to come…
The post Washington Post Resignations and Cancellations Begin, Guild Says Bezos Axed Endorsement: ‘Management Interfered’ appeared first on TheWrap.
Washington Post Staff Is Furious That Bezos Nixed Presidential Endorsement
Nikki McCann Ramirez
Fri, October 25, 2024
For the first time in 36 years, The Washington Post will not be endorsing a candidate in a presidential election — and their newsroom is furious.
On Friday, the Post’s publisher and CEO Will Lewis announced in a published statement that they “will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election.”
“Our job as the newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent. And that is what we are and will be,” he added
The Post itself reported that its editorial leadership was prepared days ago to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris over her opponent, former President Donald Trump, but a last minute intervention by the paper’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos killed the planned endorsement.
Lewis — who previously headed the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal and cut his teeth in conservative UK publications — was hand picked by Bezos in 2023 to take over the masthead at the Post. His tenure has been marked by a series of ethics scandals, including the ouster of editor Sally Buzbee after she refused to bury a story at his request, and revelations earlier this year that Lewis had offered NPR an exclusive interview in exchange for an agreement to kill a story about Lewis’ involvement in covering up illegal phone hacking by Murdoch-owned tabloids.
Lewis is Bezos’ man and, according to the Post’s report, Bezos ordered him to kill the publication’s endorsement of Harris — which had already been drafted.
When the news broke, the split between staff members at the Post and their management was almost instantly apparent.
“We are deeply concerned that The Washington Post — an American news institution in the nation’s capital — would make the decision to no longer endorse presidential candidates, especially a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election,” the Washington Post Guild wrote in a statement on Friday. ‘”The message from our chief executive, Will Lewis — not from the Editorial Board itself — makes us concerned that management interfered with the work of our members in Editorial.”
“We are already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers,” the statement continued. “This decision undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it.”
Others were less diplomatic in their response. “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t,” one Post opinion columnist told Semafor on Friday. A member of the Post’s editorial department told CNN that the decision was “an outrageous abdication of responsibility,” adding that “democracy doesn’t die in darkness, it dies when people anticipatorily consent to a fascist’s whims.”
Karen Attiah, a columnist at the Post who edited Jamal Khashoggi — a Post journalist who was brutally murdered by agents of the Saudi government in 2018 — wrote that the non-endorsement was an “absolute stab in the back,” and “an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line, to call out threats to human rights and democracy.”
Post Opinion Columnist Robert Kagan confirmed to multiple publications that he had resigned from the newspaper in protest of the intervention by Bezos.
Longtime Post editor Marty Baron, who retired in 2021, was also dismayed by the news. “This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners),” he texted his former colleagues.
Earlier this week, a similar implosion took place at The Los Angeles Times after the paper issued its own non-endorsement for the 2024 race. Earlier this month the Times’ billioniare owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, pulled the plug on plans by the editorial staff to endorse Harris. As a result, Times Editorials Editor Mariel Garza handed in her resignation on Wednesday. “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 New York Times endorsed Harris in September, calling her the “only patriotic choice” for president. Rolling Stone also endorsed Harris in September, noting that she is “a lifelong, dedicated public servant who believes that government exists to help and protect the American people” and that Trump is “demonstrably unfit to ever hold office again.”
The Washington Post ends backing presidential candidates as paper says Bezos axed Harris endorsement
Daniel Arkin
Sat, October 26, 2024
The Washington Post has endorsed a presidential contender in every general election since 1992. Not this year.
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The Washington Post's editorial board will not make a presidential endorsement this year or "in any future presidential election," the newspaper's publisher and chief executive announced Friday.
Post editorial page staff members had drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris that had yet to be published, two sources briefed on the sequence of events told The Post. The decision not to publish the Harris endorsement was made by The Post’s owner, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to the sources. NBC News has not independently verified that account.
"We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way," Will Lewis said in a statement about the decision published on The Post's website.
"We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects," Lewis added in the statement, which has been met with more than 9,000 reader comments. "We also see it as a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president."
In a statement, Post chief communications officer Kathy Baird said: “This was a Washington Post decision to not endorse, and I would refer you to the publisher’s statement in full.”
In a subsequent statement on Saturday, Lewis said that the newspaper's owner was not involved in the decision, and he, as publisher, believes that endorsements are unnecessary.
"We are an independent newspaper and should support our readers’ ability to make up their own minds," Lewis said.
The Post has endorsed a presidential contender in every general election since 1992. Lewis said his newsroom is "going back to" the practice of not formally backing White House aspirants, explaining that The Post did not make an endorsement during various presidential campaigns, including in 1960 or 1972.
The move was immediately blasted by Marty Baron, who edited The Post from 2012 until his retirement in 2021. Baron portrayed the decision as an "invitation" for former President Donald Trump to intimidate Bezos, who purchased the newspaper for $250 million in 2013.
"This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. @realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others)," Baron said in a post on the social media platform X. "Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage."
Trump sharply criticized Bezos during his presidency and derided the newspaper as "The Fake News Washington Post." He has repeatedly assailed the news media over the last eight years, sometimes referring to the American press as the "enemy of the people." In the first year of Trump's term, the newspaper adopted the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
The non-endorsement drew backlash from Post employees past and present — including Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the legendary reporters who unearthed the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s.
"We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post's own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy," Woodward and Bernstein said in a joint statement.
"Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process," the two reporters added.
Eight columnists at The Post called the decision a "terrible mistake" in a one-paragraph opinion article published hours later.
"This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them," the columnists wrote.
The leaders of the Washington Post Guild, which represents members of the newsroom, said in a statement on social media that it was "deeply concerned" by the decision. "This decision undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers' trust, not losing it," the statement said.
X and other social media platforms lit up with posts from users who said they had canceled their subscriptions to The Post.
Lewis' announcement came days after news broke that the Los Angeles Times would not endorse Trump or Harris ahead of the Nov. 5 general election. The news website Semafor reported that the newspaper was preparing to back Harris, but owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the editorial page from getting behind either candidate. (NBC News has not independently verified that report.)
In response, Mariel Garza, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned Wednesday. In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, Garza said in part: "I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up."
Soon-Shiong, in a post on X on Wednesday, said in part that the editorial board was "provided the opportunity to draft 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."
"In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years," he added. "Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision."
Shortly after The Post announced its decision, Soon-Shiong tweeted a screenshot of an article about the news.
The Washington Post is one of the most storied publications in the nation. The newspaper led the way on coverage of the Watergate scandal and won a Pulitzer Prize for public service for coverage of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The Post endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020. In the 2016 opinion piece, the editorial board called Trump a "bigoted, ignorant, deceitful, narcissistic, vengeful, petty, misogynistic, fiscally reckless, intellectually lazy, contemptuous of democracy and enamored of America’s enemies."
"As president, he would pose a grave danger to the nation and the world," the editorial board wrote.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
WaPo Publisher Cops the Blame to Defend Jeff Bezos
Corbin Bolies
Sat, October 26, 2024
Washington Post Publisher, William Lewis and Jeff Bezos
Washington Post CEO Will Lewis took the fall on Saturday for Jeff Bezos' decision to end the Post’s endorsements of presidential candidates, saying in a new statement he himself didn’t believe in presidential endorsements.
“Reporting around the role of The Washington Post owner and the decision not to publish a presidential endorsement has been inaccurate,“ Lewis said. ”He was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft. As Publisher, I do not believe in presidential endorsements. We are an independent newspaper and should support our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”
The statement came after multiple reports indicated Bezos had ordered the paper not to make an endorsement—a mere 11 days before the 2024 election, and after multiple states had already begun early voting.
A draft of a Kamala Harris endorsement had already been in the works. Lewis pleaded with Bezos not to end the Post‘s recent precedent of endorsing presidential candidates, which it has done for nearly every election since 1976. Bezos refused, and it was Lewis—not Bezos—who announced the decision on Friday.
The shock announcement roiled staff across the Post‘s news and opinion sides.
The Washington Post’s editor at large Robert Kagan resigned on Friday following the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” paper’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
More than a dozen Post columnists rebuked the decision in a column on Friday.
“It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love,” the columnists—including Post stalwarts Karen Tumulty, David Ignatius, and Jennifer Rubin—wrote. “This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020. There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs."
Other Post legends expressed the same. “We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy,” Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said in a joint statement on Friday. “Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”
Washington Post reporter ‘heartbroken’ after mom cancels subscription over nixed Harris endorsement: ‘Hurting us, not our owner’
Jon Levine
Sat, October 26, 2024
Washington Post reporter ‘heartbroken’ after mom cancels subscription over nixed Harris endorsement: ‘Hurting us, not our owner’
A mother’s love is more fickle than we thought.
A distraught Washington Post reporter took to X Saturday to reveal that her own mother had nixed her subscription to the paper to protest owner Jeff Bezos’ decision to not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race.
“My mom just told me she cancelled her subscription to The Washington Post. She reads every one of my stories. It was a heartbreaking call,” said Caroline Kitchener, who covers abortion issues for the paper.
“I understand why she did it,” the writer continued. “Post reporters had no part in this decision. But when you cancel, you are hurting us, not our owner …
“I completely understand if you’ve lost faith in our owner, but please, don’t lose faith in us.”
Washington Post reporter Caroline Kitchener’s mother dumped the paper to protest its failure to endorse Kamala Harris. x/CAKitchener
In an X thread, Kitchener said she made this case to her mother and “asked her to reconsider” — but offered no indication that her argument had been successful.
“The Washington Post’s abortion reporter was just rejected by her own mother,” conservative commentator Mark Hemingway quipped.
Bezos’ decision — which will also stand for “any future presidential election,” according to publisher Will Lewis — follows the Los Angeles Times, whose billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, also declined to issue an endorsement, leading to a flood of resignations from its editorial board.
The D.C. newspaper has been bleeding subscribers since the decision to drop presidential endorsements. Candice Tang/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
The decision from Bezos also led to a public temper tantrum by top editors and writers at the Washington Post.
“I didn’t sign up to be a journalist to be silent on what matters most. I didn’t come here to be a coward. Some of us really, truly believe in speaking truth to power. We were betrayed today,” Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah wrote on X Friday.
One WashPo editor, Robert Kagan, has already resigned over the decision, while 2,000 readers canceled their subscriptions within 24 hours, which one staffer said was “an unusually high number,” Semafor reported.
