Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, declared this week that he will introduce an AI-generated “bias meter” alongside the newspaper’s opinion and news coverage as part of a broader effort to give its readers “both sides” of the story.
The surprising move, which comes after he axed the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris and announced his intention to overhaul the Times’ editorial board to add more conservative voices, has prompted the paper’s union to publicly blast Soon-Shiong and longtime columnist Harry Litman to resign.
Appearing on the podcast of right-wing CNN political commentator Scott Jennings, who is joining the Times’ editorial board, Soon-Shiong said he’s been “quietly building” the so-called bias meter “behind the scenes. Claiming that it will debut next month, the biotech entrepreneur said it uses the same artificial intelligence technology that he’s been developing at his other businesses for years.
“Somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias,” Soon-Shiong continued. “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.”
Soon-Shiong’s remarks immediately drew an immediate rebuke from the LA Times’ union, which represents hundreds of journalists and newsroom staffers.
“Recently, the newspaper’s owner has publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples,” the guild’s council and bargaining committee said in a statement. “The statements came after the owner blocked a presidential endorsement by the newspaper’s editorial board, then unfairly blamed editorial board staffers for his decision.”
The guild added that it had “secured strong ethics protections for our members, including the right to withhold one’s byline, and we will firmly guard against any effort to improperly or unfairly alter our reporting.”
Litman, who had written for the Times for 15 years and been its senior legal columnist for the past three, announced on Thursday that he had tendered his resignation as a “protest and visceral reaction” against Soon-Shiong’s conduct as owner.
“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 wrote in a Substack post on Thursday. “Those moves can’t be defended as the sort of policy adjustment papers undergo from time to time, and that an owner, within limits, is entitled to influence.”
Following Trump’s electoral victory, Soon-Shiong told CNN last month that he planned on “balancing” the paper’s editorial board with more conservative and centrist voices, complaining that it had “veered very left” in recent years. Following the owner’s polarizing decision to block the Times’ Harris endorsement, which resulted in thousands of readers canceling their subscriptions, the board was reduced to just three members due to several resignations.
Besides Litman and the LAT guild, roughly a dozen current and former Times staffers told media reporter Oliver Darcy that they felt “demoralized” by Soon-Shiong’s heavy-handed “meddling” in the newsroom. “The man who was supposed to be our savior has turned into what now feels like the biggest internal threat to the paper,” one staffer said.
Additionally, Darcy explained why morale has plummeted at the paper in recent months — and much of it hinged on the owner’s apparent public embrace of Trump and MAGA, which they feel he is now looking to force the paper to reflect.
“There certainly is plenty of cause to be alarmed. Soon-Shiong, who once fashioned himself as a Black Lives Matter-supporting vaccine proponent, has morphed into a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jennings fanboy,” Darcy noted. “Since Trump’s victory in November, Soon-Shiong has turned to X to criticize the news media, praise Trump’s cabinet picks, and appeal to a MAGA audience. The change in behavior has confounded his journalists, who wonder what happened to the Soon-Shiong whose newspaper enforced strict Covid restrictions and emphasized its support for social justice causes.”
The Independent has reached out to a Los Angeles Times spokesperson for comment.
