Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, has announced plans to incorporate an artificial intelligence-powered “bias meter” into the newspaper’s coverage.
Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire who bought the Los Angeles Times in 2018, made the comments on a podcast hosted by conservative commentator Scott Jennings, who is soon joining the LA Times editorial board.
The proposed move is the latest controversy to rock the newspaper which has suffered a wave of resignations and layoffs under Soon-Shiong’s ownership. Most recently, Soon-Shiong blocked the paper from endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris in last month’s presidential election, sparking outrage from many staff.
The “bias meter”, Soon-Shiong said, will be integrated into articles so that “somebody could understand, as they read it, that the source of the article has some level of bias”.
“And what we need to do is not have what we call confirmation bias, and then that story automatically, the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story based on that story and then give comments,” he added.
Soon-Shiong told Jennings that he had been “quietly building” the AI tool “behind the scenes” and expressed his hope to launch it by this coming January.
His comments quickly elicited a response from the union representing many of the LA Times newsroom staffers.
“The newspaper’s owner has publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples,” the statement reads.
It adds: “Our members – and all Times staffers – abide by a strict set of ethics guidelines, which call for fairness, precision, transparency, vigilance against bias, and an earnest search to understand all sides of an issue. Those longstanding principles will continue guiding our work.”
The recent announcement of the “bias meter” comes as Soon-Shiong has, in recent weeks, expressed his desire to include more conservative voices to the paper’s opinion section.
“It is clear we need to rebirth the organization and allow dissenting views and ALL voices to be expressed … whether from the left, right or center,” he said in November. “This won’t be easy, but I’m committed to making this happen and to help heal our divided nation through a platform that enables civil discourse.”
Last week, he announced that Jennings would be joining the LA Times editorial board.
In a statement, Jennings said that he planned 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”.
Soon-Shiong has faced criticism in recent months after he blocked the LA Times editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
This decision triggered a wave of subscribers to cancel their subscriptions, staff anger and high-profile resignations at the publication, including recent Pulitzer prize winner Robert Greene and Harry Litman, a senior legal affairs columnist for the Times’ opinion page.
In a statement on Thursday, Litman said that his resignation was a “protest and visceral reaction against the conduct of the paper’s owner, Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong”.
“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,” he said. “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.”