Efforts by tech billionaires Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos to overhaul two of America’s most storied newspapers in an effort to “restore trust” in the news media are raising alarm among press advocates.
Soon-Shiong, a biotech entrepreneur who bought the Los Angeles Times in 2018, said this week he had been “quietly building” an artificial intelligence-powered “bias meter” to attach to the newspaper’s stories.
“So somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias . . . And then, automatically, the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story . . . and then give comments”, said Soon-Shiong in an appearance on political commentator Scott Jennings’ radio show.