Did the LA Times decline to endorse Kamala Harris because of her support for Israel?
The call was made by the newspaper’s owner, whose daughter is a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights
Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Nov. 7, 2022, in Los Angeles. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images
By Lauren Markoe, Sharon Rosen LeibOctober 26, 2024
The daughter of the owner of the Los Angeles Times said Saturday that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza motivated her family’s decision to withhold an endorsement in the presidential election — an explanation her father disputed.
The decision, which blocked publication of the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, sent shock waves through California, Harris’ home state. It prompted three people on the editorial board to resign, thousands of customers to cancel their subscriptions and nearly 200 Times’ staffers to sign a letter in protest.
Though the newspaper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, had earlier in the week characterized the non-endorsement as an effort to stay neutral in the divisive race, many Harris supporters saw it as a deliberate snub of the vice president, driven by Soon-Shiong’s vocally pro-Palestinian daughter.
“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,” Nika Soon-Shiong said in a statement to The New York Times.
“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.”
Dr. Soon-Shiong said his daughter got it wrong. “Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion, as every community member has the right to do,” the owner told The New York Times though a spokesperson. “She does not have any role at The L.A. Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times.”
[Update: On Nov. 5, the left-wing investigative news outlet Drop Site News published an article saying that it had obtained an internal email in which Dr. Soon-Shiong indeed cited Gaza as one of the reasons for blocking the endorsement.
“Has there ever been a time in our history when our nation is knowingly providing arms to another nation using those weapons to kill children, women, innocent people and target the press, doctors and medical workers? And policies enabling this are supported it seems by both candidates?” he asked in the email.
“We can and must acknowledge concerns for democracy and the Jan 6 episode” as well as the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Soon-Shiong wrote. “But how do we ignore the counter issues of the innocents being killed now? Do we accept that indeed genocide is happening and that we stand as a country of willing arms suppliers and yet remain silent?”]
Nika Soon-Shiong had applauded the non-endorsement on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), where she has accused Israel of genocide and pinned a Palestinian flag next to her name.
Vice President Harris, who was endorsed by the Los Angeles Times during her successful campaign for U.S. Senate and as President Joe Biden’s 2020 running mate, has a strong voting record of support for Israel. Though she has empathized with Palestinians suffering in the Israel-Hamas war, she has also failed to secure the endorsement of a movement that urged voters in Democratic primaries this year to vote “uncommitted” to protest the Biden administration’s support for Israel.
This is not a vote for Donald Trump. 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.
— Nika Soon-Shiong 🇵🇸 (@nikasoonshiong) October 25, 2024
The Los Angeles Times has endorsed a Democrat for president in every general election since 2008. The editorial board’s planned endorsement of Harris was the logical culmination of a series of editorials on the dangers of a second Trump administration, said staffers.
The campaign of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump jumped on the news, broken by Semafor on Tuesday, sending out a statement that called it a “humiliating blow” and said it showed Harris’ “fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job.”
“Numerous staffers have told me about how pained, even embarrassed, they felt after Trump used the Times to score a political point,” Sewell, the newspaper’s former editorial page editor, wrote Wednesday in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Some have speculated that Soon-Shiong, a surgeon who became a billionaire after selling his pharmaceutical companies, blocked the endorsement in an attempt to appease Trump, who is running neck-and-neck with Harris. Stat, which covers healthcare news, reported that Soon-Shiong met twice with Trump in early 2017 in hopes of landing a senior role in his administration.
This week Soon-Shiong told Spectrum News that he didn’t want to endorse any candidate because “it would just add to the division” in the nation. He added, “I don’t know how (readers) look upon me or our family as ‘ultra progressive’ or not, but I’m an Independent.”
In related news, The Washington Post’s chief executive told the news room on Friday that it would no longer endorse presidential candidates, a practice of the newspaper for decades. Will Lewis, in his note to the staff, said it was not to help or hurt any presidential candidate. The Post in a news story Friday wrote: “Some people speculated, without any proof, that the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, was being cowed by a prospective Trump administration because his other businesses have many federal government contracts.”
That decision at the Post, made by Amazon founder Bezos, also prompted resignations and outrage. “Cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” is how Marty Baron, the newspaper’s former executive editor, described the decision. The Post published many letters to the editor on the subject, including one from Georgia reader John Witt: “Not endorsing a candidate is fine normally, but in this election? When Mr. Trump has threatened political candidates and journalists? If you’re choosing profit over ethics, so be it. But you’ve lost the respect of many, including me.”
Nika Soon-Shiong
Nika Soon-Shiong, 31, has long advocated publicly for several causes, including Palestinian rights, and founded a group that supports a guaranteed income for poor Americans. On her X account she has urged journalists to describe Israel as an apartheid state. She has also followed and “liked” posts from the Quds News Network, a news agency affiliated with Hamas.
She has been scrutinized since her father bought the 144-year-old Los Angeles Times. An unflattering 2022 profile in Los Angeles Magazine criticized her “outsized influence” at the newspaper and called her “the Ivanka of the Los Angeles Times.”
“My immediate thought after reading about the Times decision was that Nika was involved,” said Paul Koretz, a Democrat, former mayor of West Hollywood and member of the Los Angeles City Council for 13 years. “The Times had no other reason not to endorse Harris except for the influence of people that strongly side with the Palestinians post-Oct. 7.”
Nearly 2,000 Los Angeles Times‘ readers — the paper has roughly half a million subscribers — cancelled their subscriptions this week, according to The Guardian. Many celebrities, some of them Jewish, announced their cancellations on X.
“Just canceled my subscription @latimes,” wrote Randi Mayem Singer, the screenwriter of Mrs. Doubtfire, on X. “WTF is wrong with you?”
“I just canceled my subscription,” wrote actor Evan Handler. “I don’t need to spend $15.96/month to read only what Patrick Soon-Shiong allows the paper’s staff to publish.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that the Los Angeles Times had endorsed Kamala Harris for state attorney general. While it endorsed her for U.S. Senate, it did not endorse her for attorney general.
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