Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong said he is planning on adding a bias meter to accompany news articles and opinion pieces on the paper’s website.
Soon-Shiong shared his plan when he was on Scott Jennings’s podcast Flyover Country. He told the political commentator and strategist that he felt like the Los Angeles Times was becoming “an echo chamber and not a trusted source.”
In an effort to combat his concerns, Soon-Shiong said the bias meter will be launched in January.
“You have a bias meter so somebody could understand, as a reader, that the source of the article has some level of bias,” Soon-Shiong said. “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.”
The plan was instantly criticized by the Los Angeles Times writer’s guild, which represents writers and reporters who work for the paper. The guild pushed back on the bias meter, saying they will “guard against any effort to improperly or unfairly alter our reporting.”
“Recently, the newspaper’s owner has publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples,” the guild 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 bias meter comes as Soon-Shiong has made several shake-ups to the paper.
Besides using Jennings’s podcast to break the news about his bias rating plans, the billionaire owner has also asked him to join the paper’s revamped editorial board.
When the paper declined to endorse either of the presidential candidates last month, there was an uproar from staffers. That decision has continued to affect the outlet weeks later, as Harry Litman, a senior legal affairs columnist, resigned from his post this week.
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“My resignation is a protest and visceral reaction against the conduct of the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong,” Litman said. “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.”
The Los Angeles Times is not the first news organization to include a bias meter on its site. Newsweek has its own “fairness meter,” which lets readers score different stories on a scale from “unfair left leaning” to “unfair right leaning.”
