The owner of the Los Angeles Times is saving the newspaper.
The Los Angeles Times may roll out an intelligence-powered “bias meter” as soon as January, in the latest move as the paper’s owner tries to revamp the property.
LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong announced the upcoming AI feature Wednesday in an interview with conservative commentator and recently appointed Times editorial board member Scott Jennings on the Mike Gallagher Show, which Jennings was guest hosting.
“Whether it’s news or an opinion – maybe an opinion or words – it has a bias meter so that someone understands as they read that the source of the article has a certain level of bias,” Soon-Shiong, a billionaire technology entrepreneur. and a doctor who bought the Times in 2018, said Wednesday.
He added that readers can “press a button and get both sides of the same story, based on that story, and make an opinion.”
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire who made his fortune in the medical industry, bought the Los Angeles Times in 2018. (Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
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The announcement comes amid promises by Soon-Shiong to overhaul the paper, which he said “brings news and ideas together.”
“If it’s news, it should be just the facts,” Soon-Shiong said.Fox News @ Night“manager of Trace Gallagher last month, adding that he wanted the paper to be more than an “echo chamber.”
Although details on the “bias meter” are scarce, Soon-Shiong said he hopes it will be launched in January.
“So we are talking about the integration of content created by journalists and the development technology that will give readers a complete view, or a complete view, of any story at any time?” Jennings asked.
“Okay,” Soon-Shiong said, pointing to X as an example of the kind of talk he hopes to encourage at the Times.
For X, “comments are as important as sometimes stories, because you get a sense of what people are thinking,” he said. “You can have discussion, discourse, and respectful disagreement, and that’s what I want to establish here.”
Shiong immediately vowed to overhaul the Times, which he said had “mixed news with opinion.” The changes included barring the planning board from endorsing a presidential candidate in the 2024 race, and appointing conservative commentator Scott Jen. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
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Some of the liberal paper’s staff did not accept Soon-Shiong’s reformation.
Three members of the editorial board resigned after Son-Shiong decided that the paper would not endorse a candidate for the 2024 presidential race.
The Times editorial board approved presidential elections from the 1880s to 1972, and resumed the practice in 2008 with the approval of Sen. Barack Obama. Since 2008, the paper has only endorsed Democratic presidential candidates and was supposed to endorse Kamala Harris.
Son-Shiong spoke to Dust about the disqualification on Wednesday.
“I started to realize that it was an echo chamber and not a reliable source,” he said of his editorial team. “When my next level of editors and the editorial board agreed with me to enter an agreement before meeting with any candidates, I got a little angry and felt that whatever they were going to say had to be really based on the facts.”
Last week, Soon-Shiong announced that Jennings, a former aide to President George W. Bush and a CNN commentator, would join the Times editorial board as part of an effort to make the paper more balanced. Jennings often draws attention online for his televised debates with his liberal CNN colleagues.
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Jennings praised Soon-Shiong’s revision of the paper in X’s post.
“At least half (or more) of the country often feels like the legacy media doesn’t care what it thinks and has little interest in properly representing their views and values. I plan to stand up for those Americans who believe they are often ignored or ridiculed by the legacy media,” Jennings wrote.
Fox News Digital’s David Rutz contributed to this report.
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