Soon-Shiong revealed more about the artificial intelligence-powered tool he plans to have displayed at the top of some articles in an interview with his outlet published Sunday. The meter he hinted was coming next year will be powered by an “augmented intelligence” patent Soon-Shiong created over the course of his career in medicine.
“We need to be that middle-of-the-road, trustworthy source,” Soon-Shiong said. “The only way you can survive is not be an echo chamber of one side.”
Besides giving readers a sense of which direction columns, op-eds, and editorials lean, Soon-Shiong said he would use the technology to review the last 50 years of Los Angeles Times opinion content and let readers see which way it has leaned. The technology will also compile items that lean in the opposite direction so readers can click through to read opposing viewpoints directly from each piece.
Soon-Shiong made waves when he flexed his power over the paper and told the editorial board not to issue an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris it had written. The Los Angeles Times is the biggest newspaper in Harris’s home state of California and endorsed her when she ran for the Senate in 2016 and for the office of attorney general before that.
The paper has endorsed a candidate in every presidential race since 2008.
According to the paper, some 20,000 readers ended their paid subscriptions in the aftermath of the nonendorsement. However, Soon-Shiong said those “who cancel [their] subscription should respect the fact that there may be two views on a certain point, and nobody has 100% the right view.”
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Soon-Shiong bought the paper in 2018. He reiterated his 100-year plan to run the paper profitably rather than treat it like a “philanthropic trust.”
The bias meter was revealed on Scott Jennings’s podcast Flyover Country earlier this month. Since then, the paper hired Jennings, who has been a regular contributor for years. More hires will soon join the board, as five board members quit as a result of Soon-Shiong stopping the paper from endorsing Harris.
