BREAKING: Newspaper Boldly Decides to Report Actual News

Media responds with fiery meltdowns [*hahahaha you can't make this stuff up].

The New Blue Times—the famously left-leaning news outlet from Liberalville (the most democratic city in the entire overwhelmingly progressive state of Woklahoma)—has made a shocking announcement. The 143-year-old tabloid, which boasts millions of monthly readers, has announced their intention to [brace yourselves, gentle readers] report the actual news. As if that weren’t egregious enough, they also plan to incorporate an AI-powered “bias meter” into every news story, so that people will know as they read any piece which political direction it favors. The idea is to foster transparency and help readers critically assess the coverage they consume. You know, so they can form their own opinions based on impartial facts and not the perspectives or biases of a particular publication.

As you can imagine, people are apoplectic.

International headlines echo a sense of turmoil surrounding this stunning, unpopular turn of events: Sparking outrage. Newsroom backlash. Columnist quits. Staff concerns. Goes Nuclear. Facing criticism. Anger boils. “If I wanted nonpartisan, unbiased news,” a New Blue Times reader reportedly spat, “I’d get on X or that godforsaken TikTok app!” The anonymous reader added that she immediately demanded a refund for her subscription, and also that her name is not, in fact, Karen.

It sounds like the sort of story The Onion would make up for yuks, but this is actually happening right-this-minute at the Los Angeles Times. It started back in October when the Times had the audacity not to endorse Kamala Harris any one presidential candidate—a move that resulted in widespread fury and prompted the resignation of several Times employees.

In the midst of the mayhem, LA Times Chairman Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong tweeted the following:

Presumably, this Editorial Board is made up of grown-ass adults. And yet the idea of a newspaper drafting factual analyses comprised of clear and non-partisan information stunned them into immobile silence.

The mind actually boggles.

And that was just the beginning. This week, veteran Los Angeles Times hack *sorry I cannot call these people ‘reporters’* Harry Litman had a public temper tantrum any hormonal 15-year-old girl would envy, rage-quitting the paper in a move he called ‘a protest and visceral reaction against the conduct of the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.’

“The owner of the LA times has decided to curry favor with Trump, to move in that direction, to be in his own words ‘fair and balanced’ and I just think this is not a time for balance when you have someone who’s not telling the truth on the other side,” Litman insisted. “It’s a really shameful capitulation I think.”

I get that the media has become unapologetically partisan, and I suppose if Tucker Carlson or el gato malo put out a piece tomorrow titled “Why Socialism Is the Solution After All” or “How Eating Ze Bugs Will Save Humanity (and the Planet),” I might well rethink my subscriptions. But Soon-Shiong isn’t advocating for an abrupt and sweeping editorial about-face; he’s simply suggesting that the paper include voices from all ranges of the political spectrum rather than continuing to bark into the liberal echo chamber of darkness and TDS.

“If we were honest with ourselves, our current board of opinion writers veered very left, which is fine, but I think in order to have balance, you also need to have somebody who would trend right, and more importantly, somebody that would trend in the middle,” Soon-Shiong said.

To democrats—who could literally find a way to make the vandalism of a nativity scene in Mexico about Trump—refusing to continually and unilaterally vilify the man is akin to praising him. It’s pandering. Brown-nosing. Submission. Resignation. It’s basically treason.

The union representing hundreds of newsroom employees put out a statement titled Our commitment to journalistic integrity, which reads in part:

Recently, the newspaper’s owner has publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples. Our members — and all Times staffers — abide by a strict set of ethics guidelines, which call for fairness, precision, transparency, vigilance against bias, and an earnest search to understand all sides of an issue. Those long-standing principles will continue guiding our work.

Without offering evidence or examples? Dr. Soon-Shiong, you should have called me! Behold if you will but one shining specimen of the sort of “fairness, precision, transparency, vigilance against bias, and an earnest search to understand all sides of an issue” readers get from the LAT:

So fair! So balanced!

Petulant journalists can cry into their organic oat milk lattes about their bootlicking boss until the donkey comes home [i.e. a democrat is back in the Oval Office], but a quick scan of the comments on that one post alone suggest Dr. Soon-Shiong is merely a shrewd businessman who’s endeavoring to give readers what they want.

Whiny Litman detailed his reasons for resigning on his substack (which you can google because I refuse to give him any traffic). In it he wrote:

“I have been a contributor to the Los Angeles Times op-ed page in some fashion for more than 15 years. I have been able to write whatever I like, including blistering criticism of Donald Trump. Before joining the Times, I was a contributing commentator for the Post. We used to say there, tongue-in-cheek, that our billionaire was better than their billionaire, meaning Bezos was more aware of his public responsibility and more hands-off in his oversight. As it turns out, both billionaires flinched when the chips were down, choosing to appease, not oppose, a criminal President with patent authoritarian ambitions.”

In writing, there’s a saying: Show, don’t tell. A lazy, unskilled writer might say, “Bob was an angry, unkind man who lived in a trailer.” A pro would write, “Bob flung open the rusty door of his doublewide and kicked his patiently waiting dog Rufus right in the face.” If Trump is truly a malicious authoritarian, his actions will prove it. Reporting on those actions—emotionlessly, even—would get the point across. There’d be no need to call him names or to try to convince readers how terrible he is; that would be redundant and apparent. (Can you imagine Peter Jennings or Water Cronkite or Tom Brokaw losing it because they couldn’t refer to John F. Kennedy disparagingly as “the Catholic candidate,” or making fun of Ronald Reagan’s “febrile imagination” on air?) Methinks many modern-day journalists hacks have forgotten the essential purpose of their craft.

How do you feel about the LA Times’ decision to actually practice journalism again? Would you consider a subscription? You know what to do. ;)

There’s still time to order gift copies of Yankee Doodle Soup and be most (or least?) popular person at the Christmas table!