Opinion columnist Harry Littman, who recently resigned from the Los Angeles Times, accused the paper's owner Patrick Soon-Shiong of allegedly “doing a favor” to President-elect Donald Trump in a “shameful capitulation.” did.
The longtime senior legal columnist, who has written for the LA Times for more than 15 years, announced his resignation Thursday. Substack Newsletter.
“I do not want to continue working for a newspaper that is placating Mr. Trump and promoting attacks on democratic rule for crazy reasons,” Littman wrote. “My resignation is a protest and a visceral reaction to the actions of the paper's owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.”
Littman follows three other editorial board members who previously resigned after Soon-Shiong blocked the 140-year-old paper from publishing a draft endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. , vowed to bring more conservative voices to the editorial board. .
About 2,000 furious readers canceled their subscriptions after the billionaire owner, who bought the LA Times for $500 million in 2018, ended their support.
“He wanted to hedge his bets in case Trump won, not even to protect the newspaper's fortunes, but rather to protect his multibillion-dollar holdings in other areas,” Littman said. I wrote it. “Soon-Shiong threw the paper at the wolves. It was cowardly.”
Later, during an appearance on MSNBC's “Deadline: The White House,” Littman argued that newspapers have an “important role to play” now that Trump has won a second term as president.
“Trump has taken control of the political arena, probably the Supreme Court, and now he's going after the FBI and possibly the military, and the FBI is actually one of the few institutions that can stand up and resist,” Littman said. . .
He joined Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in condemning Soon-Shiong, who also blocked the paper's endorsement of Harris and said he had “crowned himself” into a “shameful capitulation” to Trump. Ta.
More than 250,000 readers canceled their subscriptions to The Washington Post after Bezos blocked their endorsement.
In November, Soon-Shiong vowed to level out the Times' left-leaning political leanings.
“To be honest, the current opinion writers committee is very left-leaning, and that's fine, but in order to balance it out, we need people who lean to the right, and more importantly, people who lean to the right. “I think you need someone who's in the middle,” he said.
His controversial announcement last week that conservative commentator and Trump supporter Scott Jennings would be joining the paper's editorial board was also controversial.
During a podcast appearance with Jennings on Wednesday, Soon-Shiong revealed that he is working “behind the scenes” to create a “bias meter” for every article published in the newspaper.
He said he expects new tools powered by artificial intelligence to be released by January.
