The daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong suggested on Saturday that herfather’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.
