Donald Trump and Kamala Harris: scandal and family scandal at the Los Angeles Times

As if this 2024 presidential election wasn't already strange enough… A few days after the LA Timesthe major daily newspaper of Southern California, announced that its editorial team would not support either candidate for the presidency of the United States, a narrative as contradictory as it is confusing has just emerged. The billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiongowner of the title since 2018, claims that the problem stems from the fact that the daily's opinion department refused to comply with its directive to write a comparative list of the details of the two candidates' programs. They would have instead “chosen to remain silent”, he claims, which members and ex-members of the staff of the LA Times deny. Saturday, Soon-Shiong's daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong31 years old and a student at Oxford University, added her stone to this already rickety building. She says her family decided as a whole not to allow the newspaper to make a recommendation on who they think is best suited to occupy the country's highest office, due to concerns over U.S. support to Israel in the war in Gaza. But according to a spokesperson for her father, this assertion – which she has repeated several times on social networks – has nothing to do with reality.

This is not the first time that the Soon-Shiong family affairs have interfered with daily life. In 2022, more than thirty collaborators and ex-collaborators of the title denounced the insistence with which Patrick encouraged the publication of articles on companies in which he has interests. As for Nika, she would have attacked the newspaper's treatment of public security affairs, which she believes is too favorable to the police. In January, the editor-in-chief of the daily, Kevin Meridahad resigned with losses and noise after – according to the New York Times – Patrick Soon-Shiong tried to block the publication of an article on the legal proceedings against one of his acquaintances. The newspaper's boss denies the allegations, while Nika told Politico in 2022 that she disputed “the idea [qu’elle] controls the editorial decisions of the newspaper.

“Remaining silent is not indifference, but complicity”

That last statement might just be one of the few things the wealthy father and daughter agreed on this weekend. Last Wednesday, it was the turn of Mariel Garzachief editorialist of LA Times to resign, telling the Columbia Journalism Review that on October 11, the daily's editor-in-chief, Terry Tanghad informed the editorial committee that Patrick Soon-Shiong would not authorize the latter to officially support either candidate. In the resignation letter she gave to Tang, Garza wrote: “In these dangerous times, remaining silent is not indifference, but complicity” and believes that this decision – which at this stage had no reason not yet the subject of “comments from the management of the LAT » – « [nous] made to appear as cowards and hypocrites, even sexists and racists.”

The same evening, Patrick Soon-Shiong explained his decision on the social network “The editorial board was given the opportunity to write a fact-based analysis of all POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies pursued by EACH of the candidates during their tenure in the White House, and the impact of those policies on the nation ,” he wrote, adding that “the editorial team was asked to shed light on the policies and projects set out by the candidates during this campaign and on their potential effects on the nation during the four next years. So, with this clear, nonpartisan information, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being president over the next four years. »

“Instead of pursuing this path as suggested, the editorial board chose to remain silent,” he concludes. According to Garza, this tweet is misleading. First of all, she asserts, “what he describes in this tweet is not support, nor even an editorial line”: the comparative analysis requested by Soon-Shiong is the responsibility of the newsroom, not the newspaper's separate department that oversees editorials and opinions. Furthermore, she told the CJR, she would “not have received a request for such an analysis”.

Children of Darkness

A few hours after Patrick's explanatory tweet, Nika made her own tweet. Including a screenshot of an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates published by The Guardianwhich quotes him as saying “I don't have much hope for a Harris presidency”, the heiress wrote “The subject is Apartheid. Apartheid is the subject. » Moments later, she tweeted again, this time integrating her father's previous explanation with another screenshot of text, this time from an article about Patrick published in 2020 on a specialized site on coffee industry, Brooksy, who looks back on his experiences in South Africa during the apartheid era.