Los Angeles Times Managing Editor Hector Becerra was the subject of an HR investigation in 2022 after eight employees submitted a complaint over alleged “insulting” behavior including bullying and disparaging subordinates, before he was promoted last year to the newsroom’s second-highest leadership position, TheWrap has learned.
Ten current and former employees told TheWrap that Becerra, who has been at the Los Angeles Times since 1999, had a reputation for making personal attacks against colleagues. Employees raised concerns to Times leadership about Becerra’s behavior for years, they said, many of whom spoke under condition of anonymity.
A Los Angeles Times spokesperson told TheWrap: “We’re aware of all of the previous matters you’ve outlined, which have been addressed and resolved.”
TheWrap reported Friday that De Los assistant editor Paloma Esquivel resigned from the Times citing inappropriate behavior by Becerra and the paper’s refusal to address staff concerns about him. In a farewell Slack message, Esquivel said the last straw was when Becerra “screamed” at her in January in what she called an “abuse of power.” She wrote, “He continued to berate me,” even though she gave him “several opportunities to stop his lashing out.”
Reached by TheWrap, Becerra declined to comment.
The previous HR and staff complaints, along with the resignation by Esquivel, a 17-year veteran of the paper, raise questions about how seriously the Times’ management has taken staff concerns over the senior editor.
The spokesperson added: “The company takes employee relations matters seriously and has a process of investigating allegations of violations of our harassment-free workplace policy and the law. Any assertion that the company has ignored claims of abuse or hostility towards our employees is false.”
The management concerns arise at a difficult time for the paper, as the newsroom staff is increasingly alienated from its leadership headed by Executive Editor Terry Tang, and what amounts to all-out warfare with owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who has turned sharply to the right since the election of Donald Trump and is insisting that the paper take a more balanced approach in its reporting.
Following a series of resignations over recent Soon-Shiong decisions, such as naming conservative commentator Scott Jennings to the editorial board, more than 40 newsroom employees took a buyout last week, including some of the paper’s most experienced journalists. Becerra is among the few remaining journalists from his era at the paper. As managing editor, he is the highest-ranking Latino journalist in Los Angeles Times history.
Becerra’s promotion to managing editor in January 2024 came alongside heightened turmoil at the Times. The paper, once one of the nation’s largest, laid off more than 20% of its newsroom the same month as Becerra’s promotion. Soon-Shiong has said he seeks to stem the paper’s financial losses, which the New York Times estimated at $30 million to $40 million for 2024.
The LA Times spokesperson said that Becerra was promoted with “full visibility into his work history, and he remains in good standing with the company.”
Two HR Complaints
In 2022, shortly after Becerra was promoted to deputy managing editor from city editor, the newsroom’s HR department received two formal complaints about Becerra’s behavior, according to people interviewed and documents viewed by TheWrap. An internal investigation was opened into Becerra’s behavior in July 2022.
According to one complaint, which was submitted by the newspaper’s union and signed by eight employees, Becerra “demonstrated a pattern of both insulting his colleagues directly and disparaging them to others in the newsroom.” This included “inappropriate, highly personal, and baseless” remarks about reporters’ and editors’ abilities and work ethic, and other “unsolicited comments” sometimes made via phone calls outside of working hours.
The complaint requested that LA Times management “instruct Becerra in no uncertain terms that such behavior is utterly unacceptable and must cease immediately” and that he receive training to inform and correct the behavior.
The investigation closed in September 2022, with staffers offered the option to switch teams, the individuals who spoke to TheWrap said. The Times spokesperson declined to comment as to whether Becerra underwent workplace training in response to the complaints.
In addition to the 2022 complaints, several employees voiced concerns about Becerra’s treatment of staff directly with then-executive editor Norman Pearlstine in 2018, when Becerra was city editor, according to three people. Pearlstine referred these complaints to HR, these people said. Complaints about Becerra’s behavior were again brought up during a staff meeting in 2020.
Hector is such a known problem among staff that some have a term for when he calls and screams at you. It’s ‘getting Hector’ed.’” – a current LA Times staffer
“This is an open secret. Everyone knows he talks badly [about] and disparages and belittles reporters,” one employee who is still at the paper told TheWrap. A former employee said Becerra would complain about reporters or insult colleagues “very openly, just standing at people’s desks.”
Another current staffer told TheWrap, “Hector is such a known problem among staff that some have a term for when he calls and screams at you. It’s ‘getting Hector’ed.’”
Another former staffer recalled that Becerra would “do a lot of quantifying of how much people wrote by counting bylines, even though, under our union contract, we don’t have a quota, so that is not allowed.”
A Times spokesperson previously dismissed Esquivel’s allegations as “false.” In a lengthier comment, Deputy Managing Editor Maria L. La Ganga told TheWrap that Esquivel was “sadly and blatantly wrong.”
City Editor Cindy Chang reached out to TheWrap to say she has had only good experiences with Becerra: “When I became an editor, Hector taught me how to be an editor in a way that I had never experienced from my own editors. He has this very unique, very hands-on way of being an editor.” She also praised the way he mentored young journalists.
She declined to comment on her colleagues’ allegations, but said, “Hector is very direct; he is really passionate about journalism, and he’s not afraid to hold people accountable. Not everyone’s going to like that, but he’s doing his job.”
“Hector has been a champion of reporters who are women, of color, or both, for my entire career at the Times,” said Brittny Mejia, a Times metro reporter who has worked under Becerra. “If it weren’t for him, I would have left the paper a long time ago. The idea that he does not support reporters like me just isn’t true.”
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