Major changes are planned for the L.A. Times, with billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong saying he plans to introduce a so-called 'bias meter' on stories published by the news outlet.
According to Soon-Shiong, the AI-powered meter could be rolled out by January.
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During a conversation on the Flyover Country podcast with conservative commentator Scott Jennings, Soon-Shiong outlined his proposals.
"So I'm now working with the team behind the scenes to create truly the AI version but not AI in the sense of making up stories," said Soon-Shiong. "Whether it be news or opinion, you have a bias meter...so somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias and then...the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story...and then give comments.”
The plans have triggered an angry backlash from Times journalists.
The union representing hundreds of Times staffers released a statement saying Soon-Shiong "publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples."
"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 statement said.
The planned change also led to the resignation of senior legal columnist Harry Litman.
"I think they cowered and are worried about their personal holdings and just being threatened by Trump. And that's a really shameful capitulation, I think. So, I just felt I couldn't be a part of it and had to resign," Litman wrote in a recent Substack article.
"The man who was supposed to be our savior has turned into what now feels like the biggest internal threat to the paper," one current staffer told media reporter Oliver Darcy, who spoke with nearly a dozen team members who share a similar feeling.
Former L.A. Times editor Christina Bellantoni told KNX News she has worked with teams attempting to understand how AI can help or hurt bias in reporting. She believes it's more complex than slapping a meter on every story and calling it fixed.
"Just throwing out an example: if somebody called somebody an idiot, but that's in quotes, the bias meter would likely pick that up even if it's the most straightforward story in the world," said Bellantoni. "There are a lot of examples of people picking apart this type of work, saying it's pretty challenging to do."
She said the money Soon-Shiong is investing in the AI tool would be better spent on much-needed resources for the crucial local reporting the newspaper should be doing.
Bellantoni believes Soon-Shiong's concerns about political bias do not apply to the paper's '80% of the great work', which has nothing to do with President-Elect Trump.
Soon-Shiong thinks that adding a 'bias meter' may help restore people's trust in mainstream media, which has some say has eroded in recent years.
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