Longtime Los Angeles Times contributor Harry Litman announced his resignation from the paper Thursday, citing its changing editorial direction under the ownership of billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Litman, a former U.S. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general with more than 15 years under his belt at the metropolitan daily, was most recently the paper’s senior legal columnist.
He detailed his decision to leave the outlet in an essay published Wednesday to his Substack, “Talking Feds.”
“Yesterday, I resigned my position. I don’t want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons,” Litman wrote.
“My resignation is a protest and visceral reaction against the conduct of the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong,” he continued. “Soon-Shiong has made several moves to force the paper, over the forceful objections of his staff, into a posture more sympathetic to Donald Trump.”
In October, Soon-Shiong made headlines after ordering the paper to spike its drafted endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris—a decision Litman described as “brutal, humiliating, and unprofessional.”
“Those moves can’t be defended as the sort of policy adjustment papers undergo from time to time,” he added. “Given the existential stakes for our democracy that I believe Trump’s second term poses, and the evidence that Soon-Shiong is currying favor with the President-elect, they are repugnant and dangerous.”
Litman sat down for an interview with MSNBC Wednesday where he doubled down on the paper’s apparent Trump-leaning future, saying, “I think there is no other inference but the owner of the L.A. Times has decided to curry favor with Trump.”
“I think they cowered and are worried about their personal holdings,” he continued. “That is a really shameful capitulation. I felt I couldn’t be a part of it and had to resign.”
Soon-Shiong recently announced his intent to launch an AI-powered “bias meter” on L.A. Times web articles as soon as next year, citing his wish for a more balanced media ecosystem.
While Litman didn’t address the meter module in his resignation letter, he touched upon the owner’s approach to “balanced” reporting—calling it a “terrible dereliction of journalists’ first defining responsibility of reporting the truth.”
“Soon-Shiong apparently would have the Times deliver an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand presentation to readers,” he added. “But there is no ‘other hand.’ Trump is an inveterate liar, and journalists have a defining responsibility to call that out.”
