Technology billionaire Andrew Wong and the founder of Amazon have Jeff Bezos to “Restore Trust in the news media”, the Financial Times reported Friday, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, two well-known American media, will be overhauled in the near future. The financial times said this had“Alarmed news advocates”.
El Segundo, California, headquarters of the Los Angeles Times.
Bessus, who bought the post in 2013, was once credited with turning around the newspaper’s fortunes, the report said. However, in recent years, the Washington Post has been facing reader loss and financial difficulties. At a conference in early December, Bessus said he had “A bunch of ideas” to restore trust in the news media and was working to address the problems faced by traditional media outlets. Huang Xinxiang, owner of the Los Angeles Times, also revealed on a radio political program that he had been secretly developing an artificial intelligence“Bias meter” that could be attached to news reports, so that the reader can distinguish the degree of bias when reading the article. “Readers can click on a button to get the ‘pros and Cons’ of the story and then post their own comments,” he explained, adding that, news editors must make a clear distinction between news and their own opinions of the news.
Notably, both Hwang and Bessus withdrew the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post’s support for Democratic presidential candidate Harriss a few weeks before the election, the decision provoked a backlash from two media newsrooms. To “Create some degree of balance,” Wong recently appointed Scott Jennings, who served in the Bush Bush administration, to the Los Angeles Times editorial board. However, the move did not quell the controversy, but has triggered more discussion about the independence and impartiality of the press.
Media and practitioners expressed dissatisfaction with Huang’s behavior. The director of the Nieman Journalism Foundation at Harvard University said Huang’s actions were against his own staff. “He announced to the public his lack of trust in his staff and plans to independently monitor and grade them in public. It’s not healthy for an already fragile news industry,” said Friedrich Schiller, former chief executive of NPR, describing it as “Everyone’s worst nightmare about a billionaire boss.”.
The report also mentioned that the current U. S. Society and Public Trust in the news media is at a historical low point. Polls show that less than a third of Americans in the 2024 say they trust the media “Very” or “Very” to report the news fairly and accurately, that is down from 70 per cent in the 1970s.
Huang Xinxiang was born in South Africa of Chinese descent, and later studied in the United States. He has achieved success in medicine and business, and is known as“The richest doctor in the world.” He bought the Los Angeles Times and Kay Boyle in 2018.