Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, started making news prior to the election when he told the editorial board he did not want them to publish an endorsement of Kamala Harris. This was seen as a betrayal by liberals at the paper, some of whom quit in response.
After the election, Dr. Soon-Shiong posted a tweet on X saying that he wanted his paper to be "fair and balanced" borrowing a phrase often used by Fox News. He then went on Fox to discuss his plans to force the reliably left-wing paper to change course.
'JUST THE FACTS': Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong says the liberal paper has conflated news and opinion and vows to take it in another direction so that "all voices" will be heard. pic.twitter.com/vglhsM35q3
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 15, 2024
Anyone who thought he was just talking soon found out that wasn't the case when he announced that Scott Jennings, the lone Trump defender over at CNN, was asked to join the LA Times' editorial board.
That’s why I want Scott on our new editorial board!!! Growing the board with experts who have thoughtful balanced views and new candidates are accepting the challenge to join us! Way to go Scott and thanks for accepting @latimes @ScottJenningsKY Stay tuned we are making this…
— Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong (@DrPatSoonShiong) November 26, 2024
Jennings confirmed that he had agreed to join the board and wrote:
I think Dr Soon-Shiong is doing something important and groundbreaking and am honored he asked me to play a role in that. Roughly half (or more) of the country often feels like legacy media doesn’t care what it thinks and has little interest in fairly representing its views and values. I plan to represent those Americans who believe they are often ignored or even ridiculed in legacy media and applaud Dr Soon-Shiong’s move to bring balance to the editorial board.
The reactions to this move were exactly what you'd expect, with some conservatives saying this was a sign of improvement and progress while progressives declared it a disaster.
This guy’s a great example of how you can be brilliant at one thing and completely inept at another. https://t.co/8PdwQSAuUZ
— Dorian Hunter Davis PhD (@DorianDavis) November 29, 2024
The LA Times is going to be really boring without anyone at all subscribing to it. https://t.co/QBRSPa6HYO
— Grant Stern grantstern.bsky.social (@grantstern) November 30, 2024
I do believe I’ll have to cancel my subscription. My family has been subscribing since the year of the paper’s founding. We’ve reached the end of the line. https://t.co/jH4jfFtSko
— Lisa See (@Lisa_See) November 26, 2024
There's lots more like this and no doubt LA Times' staffers are among those who aren't pleased. But it seems Dr. Soon-Shiong isn't done making changes. Yesterday we learned that he is planning to add a "bias meter" to every story the paper publishes online. He discussed it on a radio show hosted by Scott Jennings.
The idea, as Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong presented it, sounds like it’ll be a module that presents multiple viewpoints on a particular news item as well as allow some version of comments to be integrated. And it marks the latest signal from the billionaire that he plans to reshape the Times as the second Trump administration gears up and after the exits of multiple edit board members following the endorsement flap.
“Imagine if you now take — whether it be news or opinion — and you have a bias meter, whether news or opinion, more like the opinion, or the voices, you have a bias meter so somebody could understand as a reader that the source of the article has some level of bias,” Soon-Shiong elaborated in a radio segment hosted by incoming Times editorial board member Scott Jennings...
Jennings replied, “So we’re talking about a fusion of content created by journalists and technology that you’re developing that will give the readers a more well-rounded or complete view of any given story at any given time.”
“Correct,” Soon-Shiong said, adding: “Comments are as important as sometimes the story, because you get a feel of what people are thinking and, as you said, you can have a conversation, a discourse, a respectful disagreement.”
It sounds...interesting. I'm not sure how comments will demonstrate bias or lack of it. The only system like this I've seen that actually seems to work, at least most of the time, is the community notes at X. That system requires people from both sides of the aisle to agree something is worth adding before it is published. Without that step, anyone can say almost anything and can even pretend to be coming from a perspective they don't really share, i.e. a progressive who writes I'm a Trump voter but this time he's gone too far. That sounds like an admission against interest but it's just a trick.
The paper is still working on it so maybe it will be more useful than it sounds based on this description. The real solution is to make a system that works well enough that you can average the ratings from a single author. Then you can just post that average with every article they post. If someone writes "news articles" that are reliably on the left, readers should know that. The same is true for the columnists.
Obviously, I work at a conservative site that publishes conservative analysis and commentary. But everyone who comes here knows where the site is coming from. We're not trying to fool anyone. That's not true at most liberal papers like the Washington Post or the LA Times. Articles published at those sites almost always lean left in some way yet we're all supposed to pretend they are fair and balanced journalism. The same people who shout about bias at Fox News have nothing to say about bias at the LA Times or the Post. That's bias they like and accept.
Hopefully, Dr. Soon-Shiong can continue to make changes. To be clear, he's not doing this simply because he believes in it. The LA Times has been losing money like crazy, $30-$40 million every year. Dr. Soon-Shiong is tired of writing million dollar checks every 10 days to cover those losses. Unless something changes they are going to be facing major layoffs again.
