By not knowing who the owner is, nobody can verify the existence of a pipeline from friendly editors upwards, whether or not stories need approval from upwards,

By not knowing who the owner is, nobody can verify the existence of a pipeline from friendly editors upwards, whether or not stories need approval from upwards, whether or not certain stories were commissioned by those upwards, etc. Complete transparency or bust, especially in an organization like this. The issue of individual reporters biasing individual articles is extremely small potatoes. Unfortunately, it is what most people think of when thinking 'media bias'. The much more serious issue is larger systemic bias where reporting about {X1,...,Xn} potentially never even sees the light of day, or is systemically edited in particular ways, without anyone other than top people knowing why.