LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong says ‘bias gauge’ tagged on articles coming in January

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong revealed Wednesday that he has been working “behind the scenes” to create a “bias meter” for every article that comes out of the paper.

He said he hopes the new tool, which will be supported by artificial intelligence, will be on the market by January.

It’s the businessman’s latest project to balance the newsroom, after he vowed to bring more conservative voices to the paper and faced backlash for blocking the paper’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

Soon-Shiong discussed the upcoming venture with his latest editorial board pick, Scott Jennings, a conservative commentator and staunch Trump supporter.

Every article in the news and opinion sections of the LA Times will have a bias meter, Soon-Shiong said Wednesday as host of Jennings’ “The Mike Gallagher Show.”

“So one can understand as a reader that the source of the article has a level of bias,” said Soon-Shiong, who bought the Times in 2018 for $500 million.

“The reader can push a button and get both sides of the same story, based on that story, and then provide feedback,” he explained.

The LA Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Soon-Shiong first vowed to flatten the left-leaning paper’s political slant in November.

“If we were to be honest with ourselves, our current panel of pundits veered too far to the left, which is fine, but I think in order to have balance, you also have to have someone who would cut right, and more importantly, someone who would wait. in the middle,” he said.

His promise came despite backlash a month ago, when he blocked the Times editorial board from endorsing Harris. Thousands of readers canceled their subscriptions and urged others to boycott the company on social media. Several outraged members of the editorial board resigned.

But Soon-Shiong doubled down and said the LA Times had “conflated news and opinion” and promised to ensure both sides of the political spectrum would be “heard” and “represented”.

Last week, he announced that Jennings would join the paper’s editorial board — another decision that sparked controversy.

The billionaire newspaper owner abruptly ended an interview with reporter Oliver Darcy, who left CNN and launched an independent newsletter, after Darcy pushed him about his choice to hire Jennings.

In his Status newsletter, Darcy reported that the interview “started off rather warmly” but took a turn when he disputed Soon-Shiong’s claim that Jennings was “respectful” and “thoughtful” on air alongside his fellow panelists of CNN.

Darcy wrote that he said it was “highly questionable” that Jennings was respectable and criticized him for defending President-elect Donald Trump and his “endless stream of lies and conspiracy theories.”

A “visibly upset” Soon-Shiong took issue with the Trump conversation, saying Darcy was a “so-called reporter” before ending the interview, Darcy wrote in the newsletter.