A few days ago, the Los Angeles Times was in focus when the paper's proprietor, Patrick Soon-Shiong, prevented the paper’s editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
The L.A. Times is still the largest paper in California and one of the largest in the U.S.
The paper exclusively endorsed
After that, the paper didn't endorse any presidential nominee.
However, in 2008, the paper endorsed Barack Obama, subsequently, it endorsed Democratic presidential nominees exclusively.
This non-endorsement caused outrage among members of the Times' editorial board.
One such member is Mariel Garza, who resigned from the paper in protest. Garza spoke to the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) about her decision and even shared her resignation letter.
Garza was quick to claim victimhood in her interview with CJR.
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent” Garza claimed.
Garza then confirmed what we all know about the mainstream media. They no longer care to be factual instead are blatantly partisan and ideological.
“I didn’t think we were going to change our readers’ minds—our readers, for the most part, are Harris supporters”
“We’re a very liberal paper. I didn’t think we were going to change the outcome of the election in California."
"...an endorsement was the logical next step after a series of editorials we’ve been writing about how dangerous Trump is to democracy, about his unfitness to be president, about his threats to jail his enemies. We have made the case in editorial after editorial that he shouldn’t be reelected.”
Garza's sanctimony prevents her from comprehending that she was confessing that she is a propagandist and not a journalist and that the L.A. Times is a propaganda outlet, not a newspaper.
In her resignation letter, Garza claimed that a non-endorsement makes the paper seem "craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist."
Garza added, "How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger—who we previously endorsed for the U.S. Senate?"
"The non-endorsement undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through decree by the owner."
Garza concluded her letter with a heavy dose of self-aggrandizement.
"In these dangerous times, staying silent isn’t just indifference, it is complicity. I’m standing up by stepping down from the editorial board. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately."
Garza also ended up slandering her editorial board colleagues, because, she implied she was the sole member with integrity, while implying that the rest compromised with their ideals for their paycheck.
Garza received ample media coverage for her theatrics.
Now for the part the Garza conveniently excluded:
When Patrick Soon-Shiong, objected to endorsement of Harris, he proposed an alternative.
So many comments about the @latimes Editorial Board not providing a Presidential endorsement this year. Let me clarify how this decision came about.
— Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong (@DrPatSoonShiong) October 23, 2024
The Editorial Board was provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH…
Soon-Shiong recommended that the editorial board provide 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." (Note: The capitals used for emphasis are his. -ed.)
He also recommended that the Board provide their understanding of the policies and plans cited by the candidates during this campaign and its potential effect on the nation in the next four years.
He rightly states it would allow the reader to infer who would be worthy of being president for the next four years.
He revealed that the editorial board did not respond to his ideas.
The editorial board was non-responsive because they knew an objective comparison between Trump and Harris would reveal that Trump was superior to Kamala by light years. They'd rather endorse Harris based on false premises.
Following this non-endorsement of Harris, the L.A. Times appears to be losing subscribers.
The L.A. Times Guild posted a Tweet urging their subscribers not to desert them and expressed concern about the blocking of their Harris endorsement.
A statement from Los Angeles Times Guild leadership: pic.twitter.com/yjp1LkSW55
— L.A. Times Guild ???? (@latguild) October 24, 2024
So what do we make of this?
Any organization claiming to be a news outlet shouldn't endorse any candidate. They can carry op-ed columns where the author makes a case for each candidate.
It's often claimed that the mainstream media has a Democrat bias. However, bias assumes the Democrats and the media are separate entities and that the Democrats are influencing the media.
In current times, the mainstream media is the propaganda wing for the Democrats; it's almost a department within the party.
This is why there is perfect synchronicity in their opinions and narratives. They even have identical phraseology for any given event. Perhaps the terms are supplied by a Democrat wordsmith on a morning call.
Despite the claim of commitment to diversity, they forbid the real kind of diversity, i.e., diversity of opinions, perspectives, ideologies, and political affiliations.
The people working at the L.A. Times, WaPo, NYT, or MSNBC may have different skin colors, sexual orientations, genders, etc. but their opinions are identical. The only diversity is that some are far-left Democrats while others are establishment Democrats.
This is an echo chamber that permits only the chimes of the group think. Anyone who causes discord by challenging the consensus is summarily ejected. For instance, Bari Weiss challenged the status quo at the New York Times and was compelled to resign. Another editorial page editor there was forced to resign for simply running a single op-ed from a public figure whose ideas were at odds with their orthodoxies.
Award committees have been co-opted into this ecosystem, too.
In 2018, both the NYT and the WaPo won the Pulitzer for their coverage of Trump-Russian collusion. The fact that the story was debunked didn't matter. Among the members of the Pulitzer Jury was Carlos Lozada, an associate editor at the WaPo. Hence an employee of the Post among the jury to award the Post the big prize.
These outlets have cultivated a subscriber base that only wants to confirm their bias. Hence, the outfit strives not to report facts but to appease its subscribers. When the outlet even deviates, the subscribers rebel and cancel their subscriptions.
This is what is happening at the Los Angeles Times.
In 2019, the New York Times was compelled to alter an anti-Trump headline of an already anti-Trump story after its subscriber base complained that the headline didn't go far enough.
Once upon a time, an editorial in a newspaper was unique, intellectually challenging, and thought-provoking. But those days are long gone. Currently, the op-ed pieces read like demagoguery.
Previously, journalists, even editorial writers to some extent, would strive to disguise their biases, and whenever they accidentally exposed their partisanship, they would claim it was an inadvertent error. Previously there were consequences for peddling propaganda.
But this is the era of the unrepentant propagandist.
Mariel Garza had no compunctions calling her former organization a 'very liberal paper.'
When President Trump branded these propaganda outfits the enemy of the people, he was right. These outfits are the reason millions of Americans are not only misinformed but also paranoid and angry.
If the media covered the news factually, the Democrats would never win an election.
Image: The Angels 2010, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed
