Listserv Journalism

Authored by John Maxwell Hamilton via RealClearPolitics.com,

Anyone wanting to understand how truth has become a free-for-all need look no further than an idea conceived by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times.

This month Soon-Shiong announced his daily newspaper would provide readers with a “bias meter” next to each news report. If readers do not like the point of view of a story, they “can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story based on that story, and then give comments.”

Newspapers have a long history of idiosyncrasies. In line with Christian Scientists’ preference for spiritual healing, their newspaper the Christian Science Monitor did a poor job of covering medical news during much of its otherwise illustrious history. Col. Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune in the mid-20th century, used his paper to promote alternative spellings such as “thru” for “through” and “iland” for “island.” His “sane spelling” crusade fizzled.

Soon-Shiong’s innovation at the Los Angeles Times, however, is in a class by itself. It is an advertisement not to buy his newspaper. People who subscribe to the Times, the largest newspaper west of the Mississippi River, do so presumably because its reporters make sense of current events. If people don’t believe reporters do that, then why should they buy the newspaper? It is easy to see why many of the newspaper’s accomplished journalists are jumping ship.

Soon-Shiong has made millions inventing medicines. But his bias meter invention is poison for his paper and, in effect, for newspapers generally. It argues that news should be what you want it to be. Readers are invited to treat the news as a listserv in which liked-minded people gather around mutual interests and don’t challenge each other’s point of view.

To understand the significance of this, consider what happens when traditional newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times make a mistake. They publish a correction. How many admissions of error do you read on your favorite partisan site?

The any-news-you-want syndrome has been building momentum for some time. Much of cable news employs the bias meter concept. Press your remote and you get MSNBC or Fox News, depending on what alternative partisan universe you want. Or you can click on social media that have even less interest in facts or fairness – and have large audiences eager to hit the “thumbs up” reply button.

Elon Musk showed the wreckage that can be caused by this sort of news media when he intervened in the budget negotiations a few days ago. In scores of early-morning tweets on his social media platform X, he badgered Republicans to renege on a bipartisan budget agreement. He passed along misinformation on the bill, for instance, that it included a 40% pay raise for members of Congress. (The proposed increase was actually a 3.8% cost-of-living increase for members whose pay hasn’t been augmented in 15 years). Republican legislators, fearful of a backlash, fell in line.

This descent into listserv journalism is part of a broader pattern of mediating institutions losing their power. As Musk’s sway over congressional legislation shows, political parties find it difficult to manage their own agenda or their own members. Americans may dislike the idea of presidential candidates being chosen in “smoke-filled” rooms, but the largely unmediated primary system in place today produces candidates who are more extreme and possess less political experience. In the recent presidential election, many voters bemoaned that both candidates were deeply flawed.

As political scientist Thomas Patterson has noted, “For all of their shortcomings, parties are the best instrument of democratic politics.” The absence of party discipline is a key factor in Congress’ difficulty passing routine measures such as budget appropriations.

Think tanks, another mediating institution, also have gone off the rails. When they were originally created more than a century ago, think tanks were – in the words of journalist Walter Lippmann – “bureaus of intelligence.”  They were supposed to apply in-depth, objective research to address a wide range of social, economic, and political problems, from diplomacy to health care. Unfortunately, they have become increasingly partisan along the lines of the liberal Center for American Progress or the conservative Heritage Foundation, whose controversial Project 2025 is a blueprint for reshaping the government under a Trump administration.

“If partisan think tanks did not exist,” political scientist E.J. Fagan has noted, “American politics would be far less polarized.”

Newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times traditionally have played an important role in keeping the other mediating institutions honest. They were not perfect at this task. But institutional models are rarely a choice between good and bad. They are a choice between better and worse. We are far worse off when the goal of journalism is to make readers, viewers, and listeners happy, rather than challenged.

Publishers like Patrick Soon-Shiong should be applauded for wanting more conservative voices on their newspaper’s opinion page. Diversity of viewpoint is the principle behind RealClearPolitics, and it serves readers well. There is nothing to applaud, however, in discrediting the idea of tough reporting.

Nor should we applaud media moguls and cable TV personalities trooping to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of President-elect Trump. Among these is Jeff Bezos, owner of one of the most influential independent newspaper franchises in the country, the Washington Post. He recently dined with Trump and Musk and has declared he is “optimistic” about the upcoming Trump administration.

Bezos was not such a cheerleader when he and a few top Post executives had an off-the-record dinner with Trump at the start of his first term. Marty Baron, the Post’s top editor at the time, wished they had not dined with Trump at all. “Surely,” Baron wrote in his recent memoir, “he would see the dinner as a favor and expect something in return. … Our job was to report aggressively on the president to hold his administration, like all others, to account.”

One of the lessons from the rapid turnover of White House staff during Trump’s first term is that his loyalty is conditional. Every figure in Trump’s life is an apprentice, easily discarded, depending on how compliant they are to his wishes. There’s little doubt that Elon Musk will learn this lesson himself in due course. But serious newspaper owners will be banished more quickly from Trump’s good graces. Their objective should be to enhance the credibility of their newspaper by keeping the president at arm’s length.

Fact-based news, as we knew it a generation ago, is in mortal combat with news that is agenda-driven.

We live in a world where it is easier than ever to hide from facts that are inconvenient but enlightening.

The bias meter is not a solution. It is the problem.

If owners of news media with long traditions of excellence don’t understand that basic fact of life, high quality journalism is doomed.