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An attempt by the owner of the Los Angeles Times to find the middle was viewed as “meddling” as efforts against editorial bias demanded a “break from writing about Trump.”
Even before President-elect Donald Trump had secured his return to the White House, it had become increasingly evident that the crusaders of corporate media struggled to differentiate their opinions from facts. Where the Times was concerned, owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong sought to steer clear of perpetuating an “echo chamber” prompting complaints from staffers.
“We understand that Dr. Soon-Shiong has a role in shaping the tone and direction of the editorial board and Opinion section, but we are still bound by the core values and ethics of journalism, including a duty to be transparent and act in service of the public,” a memo sent to the newspapers executive editor Terry Tang stated, according to a report from Oliver Darcy.
“We believe we have an obligation to report these under the ethics policy, which states that ‘the primary goals always should be to protect The Times’ integrity,’” the staffers went on as Darcy wrote for Status:
“Most notably, the staffers said in the memo that Soon-Shiong has requested the newspaper’s editorial board outright ‘take a break from writing about Trump,’ a move that would prevent the body from weighing in on the president-elect as he appoints extremists to key government posts, wades into foreign policy, teases mass deportations, floats upending vaccine requirements for children, issues threats to the news media, and more.”
In what Darcy described as an “appeal to the MAGA movement,” Soon-Shiong had instituted a policy requiring opposing views of an issue be presented, which the memo insisted, “effectively killed or indefinitely delayed multiple editorials that have been written and edited but remain unpublished.”
Put another way, the editorial board was either incapable or refused to frame the president-elect in a positive light.
As one of several prominent outlets to buck tradition and refuse to issue an endorsement for the 2024 presidential election, a decision that resulted in the head of the editorial board quitting and thousands of subscribers abandoning the paper, Soon-Shiong made it his goal to make the Times a “trustworthy” outlet.
Toward that goal, he expressed his plan to introduce a “bias meter” beginning in January that would allow readers to get both sides of the same story to quell confirmation bias.
“It’s exhausting to turn on Fox and turn on CNN and turn on MSNBC. We need to be that middle-of-the-road, trustworthy source… I think that’s our goal/ The only way you can survive is not be an echo chamber of one side,” he recently said in an interview with his own paper.
On X, Soon-Shiong recently voiced surprise when former Times writer David Haldane contended that only 4% of journalists identify as Republicans, further enforcing the need to set guidelines to achieve his goal.
“If it’s news, it should just be the facts, period. And if it’s an opinion, that’s maybe an opinion of the news, and that’s what I call now a voice,” the doctor told Fox News, admitting he himself had been guilty of conflating the two. “And so, we want voices from all sides to be heard, and we want the news to be just the facts.”
Of his lasting “100-year plan” for the outlet he purchased in 2018, he expressed, “And as long as I can see progress…I’ll continue to fund it, yes.”
“But something has to change if all this is [being] considered a philanthropic trust. It’s not. A sustainable business has to occur,” he added, contending diverse opinions would be the key to success.
Providing a staffer’s rating of negative five on a scale of 0-10, Darcy relayed that, “Morale in the newsroom has plummeted in recent weeks.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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