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For a large portion of our past, the @latimes was an institution deeply rooted in white supremacy.
It’s important, in this season of reconciliation and reflection, that we apologize for our past. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-reckoning-with-racism
It’s important, in this season of reconciliation and reflection, that we apologize for our past. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-reckoning-with-racism
Prompted by a pandemic, an economic crisis and a national debate over policing, our nation now faces a long-delayed reckoning with systemic racism.
We owe it to readers to also take part in that self-examination.
This editorial is part of that process. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-apology-racism
We owe it to readers to also take part in that self-examination.
This editorial is part of that process. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-apology-racism
A tragic example of our history of racism is newspaper’s support for wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans, one of the most egregious violations of civil liberties in our nation’s history. (The Times apologized in 2017 for that editorial position.) https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-internment-anniversary-20170219-story.html
In 1943, with our coverage of the Zoot Suit riots, The Times largely ignored the context — the social and economic upheaval brought about by wartime mobilization and the racist trope of threatened white womanhood — and blamed the victims instead of their assailants.
Even as The Times moved becam more progressive, its newsroom did not come close to representing the city’s demographics. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-coverage-diverse-communities
The Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the August 1965 civil unrest in Watts, yet the reporters and editors on the story were nearly all white. https://documents.latimes.com/1965-watts-riots/
It was not just that The Times saw fit to hire white men almost exclusively; the stories it told were largely for and about white people, which meant Angelenos weren’t getting an accurate account of their city, region and state at a time of rapid change. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/race-los-angeles-times-journalism-coverage
Progress at The Times came from the bottom up. In 1982, a group of Latino journalists began an effort to tell a rich and deep narrative of their growing community.
The result: the 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning series on Latinos. https://www.latimes.com/california/latinos
The result: the 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning series on Latinos. https://www.latimes.com/california/latinos
The same year, The Times’ parent company, Times-Mirror, established a Minority Editorial Training Program, or MetPro, which continues to this day. https://www.latimes.com/about/pressreleases/story/2020-07-31/ten-metpro-journalists-will-be-promoted-to-los-angeles-times-staff
The Times was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the unrest following the police beating of Rodney King in 1991. But academics later argued that The Times overemphasized the role of Black Angelenos and sensationalized Black-Korean conflict. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/black-reporter-racism-los-angeles-times-newsroom
Then, in 1994, the editorial board endorsed Gov. Pete Wilson for reelection. Wilson was a proponent of Prop 187 which sought to bar undocumented immigrants from access to state-funded healthcare and education. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-15/prop-187-this-is-california-battle-podcast
In more recent years, the Times has improved the diversity of our staff, at one time having three Black editors and two Latinos on the masthead. Our first Asian-American to lead the times oversaw a period of turmoil and shrinking staff. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-historical-latino-coverage
By the time The Times was sold in 2018, to the physician and pharmaceutical inventor Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper was down to about 400 journalists. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-reckoning-on-race
Where does The Times go from here?
An organization should not be defined by its failures, but it must acknowledge them if it is to hope for a better future. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-historical-latino-coverage
An organization should not be defined by its failures, but it must acknowledge them if it is to hope for a better future. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-historical-latino-coverage
The Times will redouble and refocus efforts to become an inclusive and inspiring voice of California — a sentinel that employs investigative and accountability reporting to help protect our fragile democracy and chronicles the stories of the Golden State. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-apology-racism
We apologize for our past mistakes and for the troubling parts of our history and we vow to do better. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-apology-racism
Read our series on our reckoning with racism, which includes pieces from current and former reporters and a deep examination of the history of racism at the Times https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-reckoning-with-racism
We’ve made our apology free for all readers. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles-times-apology-racism
