The L.A. Times’ editor is stepping down. Did his policy on Israel coverage lead to his ouster?
The Los Angeles Times headquarters in El Segundo, California. Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
By Louis Keene January 9, 2024
Los Angeles Times executive editor Kevin Merida announced Tuesday he was stepping down after less than three years at the helm.
While the reasons for his resignation were not immediately clear — Merida did not provide one — reporting by The New York Times suggests that a disagreement about Israel coverage between Merida and the paper’s owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, may have contributed to his departure.
According to the Times, which attributed its reporting to two people with knowledge of the situation, Merida clashed with the Soon-Shiong family over his decision to restrict journalists who signed a November open letter condemning Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks from covering the war in Gaza.
“Some members of the Soon-Shiong family raised objections to Mr. Merida’s decision, one of the people said,” the Times reported, “and they were unable to reach a resolution with Mr. Merida and even discussed selling the newspaper.”
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Times did not return a request for comment.
The letter condemning Israel’s military response, which called on news outlets to use terms such as “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide,” was signed by more than three dozen reporters and editors from the L.A. Times, according to Mediaite. More than 1,000 journalists in total, from outlets including the Chicago Sun-Times, Huffington Post and MSNBC, signed the letter.
Merida’s decision to ban those staffers from Gaza coverage for at least three months was reported in November by Semafor, which said the reporters in question were informed privately of their restriction.
Merida did not respond to a request for comment.
Semafor also reported that in the wake of the letter, Merida reminded the newsroom of the company’s ethics policy in an email, stating that a “fair-minded reader of the Times news coverage should not be able to discern the private opinions of those who contributed to that coverage, or to infer that the organization is promoting any agenda.”
One L.A. Times reporter who signed the letter, Suhauna Hussain, spoke out publicly against Merida’s decision at the time.
“Yes it’s true we’ve been taken off coverage, which in effect removes a great many Muslim journalists and most if not all Palestinians at the L.A. Times from coverage,” Hussain wrote on X, adding that it was “not true or at least not clear signing letter is a violation of L.A. Times ethics policy.”
Conflict over the Israel-Hamas war has spilled over from several newsrooms into public, including at The New York Times, where writer Jazmine Hughes resigned after signing a separate open letter opposing the war in Gaza.
“SAD day at the @latimes,” Meg James, an L.A. Times senior writer who covers the entertainment industry, wrote on X, adding: “Story coming pronto.”
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