The daughter of Los Angeles Occasions proprietor Patrick Quickly-Shiong is weighing in on the controversy that has erupted across the paper’s resolution not to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024, saying that “for me, genocide is a line in the sand.”
In a thread of social media posts on Thursday, Nika Quickly-Shiong attributed the choice to an opposition to Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’ place on the struggle on Gaza. She wrote that her father, a South African transplant surgeon, had labored as an emergency surgeon at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto throughout apartheid. “For my family, Apartheid is not a vague concept.” Sustaining that the choice to endorse was one made by the Los Angeles Occasions editorial board, Nika added, “This is not a vote for Donald Trump. This is a refusal to ENDORSE a candidate that is overseeing a war on children.”
She continued, “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.”
The posts arrive because the Occasions faces an inner and exterior firestorm over its resolution not to endorse a candidate within the 2024 election. Three editorial board members have resigned for the reason that resolution was made public, with one, Mariel Garza, saying in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Evaluation that proprietor Patrick Quickly-Shiong had made his want not to endorse clear by way of a message conveyed by Occasions government editor Terry Tang. Beforehand, Garza had been drafting a top level view of an editorial that will announce an endorsement of Harris, she mentioned.
In his personal assertion to The New York Occasions on Saturday, Patrick Quickly-Shiong mentioned by way of a spokeswoman, “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 L.A. Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times.”
Semafor has moreover reported that Patrick Quickly-Shiong blocked the Occasions editorial board from endorsing a candidate regardless that it was making ready to.
Whereas some retailers have prompt that Patrick Quickly-Shiong could have pushed for a non-endorsement so as to curry favor with former President Donald Trump within the occasion he’s re-elected, two well-placed sources on the Occasions counsel that the true purpose is antipathy towards Harris for her and the Biden administration’s stance on Israel. “They’ve both been very critical of the administration and its support for Israel, and Nika has been especially vociferous about that,” says one supply. “She has regularly accused Israel of genocide and condemned the administration for their support. Just look at her Twitter feed — she has a Palestinian flag in her bio. Patrick is less vocal, but he agrees with her. I think there’s no question that their refusal to endorse Kamala stems from that.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to the Los Angeles Occasions for remark.
In July, a Occasions photograph caption inserted in a story about a Los Angeles Metropolis Council movement to fund further safety for synagogues and Jewish locations of worship sparked outrage from the Jewish group and calls to boycott the paper.
The Quickly-Shiong household has confronted claims previously that they’ve tried to intervene within the paper’s protection. After government editor Kevin Merida exited in January, THR reported that one latest battle between Merida and the Quickly-Shiong household occurred when greater than three dozen Occasions reporters “signed a Nov. 9 statement severely critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza but barely mentioning the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel launched from the Hamas-controlled territory.” Below strain from senior editors, Merida restricted those that signed the assertion from masking the struggle in Gaza for 90 days.
Nika Quickly-Shiong has additionally confronted stories that she has influenced the paper’s editorial work regardless of not having an official function on the Occasions. THR has reported that throughout the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, she fought with Occasions management over the use of the time period “looting” and criticized Occasions employees writers on Twitter. Politico has reported that in 2020, she appeared in employees conferences that tackled the difficulty of the place the paper had gone incorrect in masking race points and that when she turned a West Hollywood public security commissioner, she pitched tales in regards to the fee and “complained about headlines.”
On the time, Nika Quickly-Shiong informed Politico that she served as an adviser to the paper however mentioned she didn’t management editorial choices or have a “formal role.”
This story initially printed Oct. 25 at 9:15 a.m.
