Photo (cc) by Nick Youngson via The Blue Diamond Gallery
You wouldn’t think it could happen again — but it did. Mere weeks after a small community news site in New York State reported a murder without bothering to do the due diligence that would have revealed the incident never took place, the same thing has happened in New Jersey. The difference is the role played by artificial intelligence.
At the Mid Hudson News in Newburgh, New York, the fake news was published as a result of human error. Its story was then picked up by the aggregation site NewsBreak, which added a commentary generated by AI lamenting the rise of social media as a factor in such (non-existent) violence.
In New Jersey, a false report of a murder actually originated at NewsBreak, and it appears to have been wholly generated by AI. Eric Conklin of NJ.com reports:
Police in a New Jersey city are urging the public to ignore a story featured on a news website about a fatal shooting they say was written using artificial intelligence.
The story on Newsbreak.com [the link now goes to a 404] said a “local resident” was found dead in the 100 block of West Broad Street in Bridgeton on Christmas Day. It further dives into the gun debate in America as communities seek an end to violence….
Police on Wednesday said the story has been circulating on social media, emphasizing an italicized note at the bottom of the text that the piece “includes content assisted by AI tools”
“Nothing even similar to this story occurred on or around Christmas, or even in recent memory for the area they described,” Bridgeton police wrote on their official Facebook page.
Noor Al-Sibai has a good overview at Futurism and observes:
Ultimately, the slipperiness of this faux article’s sourcing speaks to the heart of AI-generated content. Instead of revolutionizing media — or anything else, for that matter — outlet owners who insist on using generative AI instead of human writers have done little more than sow discord in an institution that’s already infamously mistrusted by the public.
Indeed. It also shows that even as local journalists with ethical scruples struggle to be heard above the noise, operators like NewsBreak will continue to take advantage of the crisis in community journalism to crank out fake news for fun and profit. Keep in mind, too, that most of the AI-generated crap that appears on sites like NewsBreak does not rise to the level of a murder that never actually happened, which makes it all the more difficult to parse fiction from reality. Caveat emptor.
I had hoped there would be good news this morning about Eugene Weekly, a free alternative paper in Oregon that abruptly shut down last week and announced that a former employee had embezzled tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, we’re still waiting to see if EW, as it’s called, will be able to raise enough money from its readers to get back on its feet.
The story began to unfold when people encountered a poster inside the bright red boxes that normally hold copies of the paper. The message: “Where’s the Damn Paper? Eugene Weekly is fighting to come back after a massive financial blow.” According to a letter to readers posted online, EW said it had been victimized by someone inside the company. Some $70,000 in printing bills hadn’t been paid. Money that was supposed to have been transferred into employees’ retirement accounts wasn’t. And on and on. The paper stopped print production and laid off its entire 10-employee staff.
EW, founded in 1982, distributes about 30,000 free copies of the paper each week, and is a vital source of news and information. Like most alt-weeklies, it offers a mix of arts and culture, investigative reporting, and entertainment listings. The homepage currently highlights a story about the local performing arts center, which is leasing security scanners for $170,000 a year from a company that is under investigation for letting weapons slip by at schools. Now all of that is in danger. Here’s part of the letter to readers:
Shortly before Christmas, we discovered that EW had been the victim of embezzlement at the hands of someone we once trusted. We are still counting up the damage, but it’s thousands upon thousands. The theft of EW’s funds remained hidden for years and has left our finances in shambles. A team of private forensic accountants is analyzing our books and accounts. We’ve reported the thefts to the Eugene Police Department, which is conducting an investigation.
The Associated Press interviewed Brent Walth, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon, who said EW has had “an outsized impact in filling the widening gaps in news coverage.” Among other things, Walth said the paper runs obituaries of homeless people, a real service at a time when many papers have gotten rid of free obits and instead charge high fees to bereaved families. EW has also played an important role in launching the careers of young journalists, Walth said.
The paper is in the midst of a fundraising campaign, and, according to The New York Times, had received $42,000 in donations as of Monday. Camilla Mortensen, the editor, said the paper needs about $150,000, so it sounds like they’re on their way. If you’d like to help, just click here. My suggestion is that you give directly to the paper rather than to its affiliated nonprofit, which supports public interest reporting. EW itself is for-profit, so your donation will not be tax-deductible. But this is an emergency.
I hope you’ll join Ellen Clegg and me for the launch of our book, “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” The event will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 9, at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith. It’s free, but Booksmith asks that you register in advance. Ellen and I visited nine parts of the country to report on independent local and regional news projects, most of them startups, most of them digital. We came away with profound respect for the news entrepreneurs we met and with optimism for what the future holds.
The case for disqualifying Donald Trump from running for president is almost certainly headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, and that’s exactly where it belongs. The court needs to make a determination as to whether Trump “engaged in insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021. He did. We watched him do it. But without an official ruling of some sort, it would be illegitimate to throw him off the ballot.
A 4-3 ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court doesn’t get the job done. Neither does an opinion issued by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Nevertheless, they both did the country a service, because they’ve started the wheels turning to resolve this issue once and for all — or at least for the 2024 election. Let’s look at what Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Now, the Supremes may cop out by claiming that candidates for president aren’t specifically covered by Section 3, or that it was intended solely to prevent Confederate officials from seeking political positions. That would be a travesty. Because what we really need to know is whether SCOTUS believes that Trump “engaged in insurrection” by whipping up a mob of supporters in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Again, we know he did it. But that’s not the same as a congressional determination, which we don’t have, or a Supreme Court ruling, which we almost certainly will. What does it mean, legally and constitutionally, to attempt an insurrection against the government?
I’m not saying that I trust the court; quite the contrary. But we only have one Supreme Court, and thus it’s important that the justices weigh in. Much of the debate over the 14th Amendment has been profoundly unserious. Voters should have the right to decide? Not if a candidate is ineligible. That’s why someone younger than 35 or who’s born in another country can’t run. Throwing Trump off the ballot would risk violence and rebellion? Then why have a Constitution in the first place? We are a country of laws, or at least that’s the idea.
The decision needs to be made by an institution that we would all recognize as having the last word, whether we agree or not. The Supreme Court is that institution. I wish we had a better court, but that’s an issue for another day.
My Northeastern classmate and 1970s Northeastern News stalwart Marc Myers has written a wonderful essay for The Wall Street Journal about Paul McCartney’s album “Band on the Run,” which came out 50 years ago in December. I always thought of it as the last Beatles album, and the second best of the band’s solo albums after George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass.” This is a free link.
Happy New Year! Today is the day that a number of creative works enter the public domain — including “Steamboat Willie,” the first film starring Mickey Mouse. Enjoy!
Today’s Boston Globe includes a full-page ad from CEO Linda Henry thanking readers for their support. Yet the ad appears only in the print edition, even though digital readers far outnumber print subscribers. I’ll give the Globe the benefit of the doubt and assume that many readers are like me — they often look at the e-edition, especially on Sunday. Anyway, here’s the ad.
Update: Oops. Never mind. I figured I’d covered myself when I couldn’t find Henry’s message on the Globe’s website, but a couple of Media Nation readers immediately let me know that it went out in an email to subscribers on Saturday. I guess I should read my email more carefully.
It’s time once again to take a look at the state of Media Nation and share the most-read posts of the past year. It’s a little complicated this year — in late July, I moved the blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org, and the numbers for January through July look different when compared to August through December. It seems to be an apples-and-oranges problem, but I can’t put my finger on it. Given that, I’m going to list the top five for the first seven months and the top five for the last five months. Presumably it will be easier to figure it out next year.
January-July 2023
1. Andrea Estes has left the Globe following an error-riddled story about the MBTA (May 4). One of The Boston Globe’s top investigative reporters was fired after the paper erroneously reported that three top managers at the MBTA were living in distant locations when in fact they were in the Boston area. Six others really were working remotely. The Globe has still not disclosed what went wrong, and, by fall, Estes was working at the Plymouth Independent, a well-funded nonprofit with some prominent Globe alumni.
2. Liz Cheney for speaker(Jan. 3). With the dysfunctional House Republicans unable to agree on a speaker, I suggested that a bipartisan coalition turn to Cheney, a hard-right conservative who had nevertheless endeared herself to some Democrats with her service on the House committee that investigated the role played by Donald Trump and others in the failed insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.
3. An ombudsman could have explained what went wrong with the Globe’s MBTA story(April 28). Following a lengthy correction to Andrea Estes’ story about the MBTA, I urged that the Globe, as well as other news organizations, bring back the ombudsman’s position, something that nearly all news organizations had abandoned over the past 10 years. Sometimes called the public editor, the ombudsman’s role is to act as a reader advocate and look into problems with coverage, standards, tone and other matters.
5.Why the Internet Archive’s copyright battle is likely to come to a very bad end(March 21). We all love the Internet Archive. In my view, though, it’s heading down a very bad road, claiming the right to copy and lend books without first reaching a licensing agreement with the publishers, as every other library does. Early indications were that the courts would not look kindly upon the Archive’s arguments, and I doubt that’s going to change. There are many negative observations I could make about copyright law, but it is the law.
August-December 2023
1. The late Matthew Stuart’s lawyer blasts the Globe(Dec. 6). After The Boston Globe published its massive overview of the 1989 Carol Stuart case, Nancy Gertner, who had been the late Matthew Stuart’s lawyer, took to GBH Radio (89.7 FM) and blasted the Globe for suggesting that Matthew may have been directly involved in fatal shooting Carol Stuart, the wounding of her husband, Charles Stuart, or both. (A brief synopsis: Charles Stuart, who had planned the murder, blamed the shootings on “a Black man,” turning the city upside-down for weeks, and then finally jumped to his death off the Tobin Bridge as police were moving in.) Several days after Gertner’s remarks, Globe columnist Adrian Walker, who worked closely on the project and narrated the accompanying podcast, appeared on GBH to defend the Globe’s reporting and assert that the paper did not draw any conclusions about Matthew Stuart’s role.
2. The Globe announces expanded regional coverage of Greater Boston(Sept. 6). The Boston Globe is among a tiny handful of regional newspapers that are growing and hiring — and the paper took another step in September by announcing more coverage in Cambridge, Somerville and the suburbs. The Globe already has bureaus in Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Good news all around, although it’s no substitute for detailed coverage of local government, schools, development and the like. Some communities are now being well-covered by startup news outlets, most of them nonprofit; others, though, have little or nothing.
3. A devastating portrayal of Elon Musk raises serious questions about capitalism run amok(Aug. 23). The world’s richest person was unavoidable in 2023, mainly for his destruction of Twitter, the plaything he bought the previous fall. Ronan Farrow, writing in The New Yorker, took a deep dive into Musk’s life and career, describing him as an out-of-control egomaniac with scant regard for safety at SpaceX and Tesla, his grandiosity fed by what may be his overindulgence in ketamine. Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk got more attention, but Farrow delivered the goods.
4. More evidence that Woodrow Wilson was among our very worst presidents(Oct. 9, 2022). Why this post from 2022 popped up is a mystery to me, but it’s nevertheless heartening to see that Wilson’s reputation continues to disintegrate. I shared a New York Times review of a Wilson biography by Adam Hochschild. The reviewer, Thomas Meaney, wrote that the book deals mainly with Wilson’s “terror campaign against American radicals, dissidents, immigrants and workers makes the McCarthyism of the 1950s look almost subtle by comparison.” And lets not forget that Wilson was also a vicious racist.
5. Nobel winner weighs in on a shocking police raid against a newspaper: ‘It’s happening to you now’(Aug. 12). One of several posts I wrote about a police raid of the offices of the Marion County Record in rural Kansas as well as the homes of the publisher and a city official. Publisher Eric Meyer’s mother, Joan Meyer, still involved in the paper at the age of 97, died the next day, apparently because of stress. “It’s happening to you now,” said Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous resistance to her own country’s authoritarian regime. The ostensible reason for the police department’s thug-like action involved supposedly confidential driver’s records belong to a local restaurateur; more likely, it involved the paper’s investigation of Police Chief Gideon Cody’s alleged misconduct at his previous job. Two months after the raid, Cody resigned.
This might be my final post of 2023. Thank you, as always, for reading. And I wish all of you health and happiness in the year ahead.
Edgartown Lighthouse on Martha’s Vineyard. Photo (cc) 2012 by David Berkowitz.
The MV Times, one of two weekly papers on Martha’s Vineyard, has been sold to a local businessman who will maintain it as an independent news outlet. Steve Bernier, a store owner, purchased the paper from Peter and Barbara Oberfest, who had been full-time owners for the past 20 years. Charles Sennott, a Vineyard resident who is the founder of the GroundTruth Project and co-founder of Report for America, will serve as acting publisher.
The other paper, the Vineyard Gazette, is also independent, and at one time was owned by the legendary New York Times journalist Jame Reston and his wife, Times journalist Sally Reston.
A video clip of Liz Walker’s first newscast on WBZ-TV. Bob Lobel is at left.
For anyone under 40, or maybe 50, the idea that local television journalists used to be among our most prominent celebrities may sound unimaginable. Yes, today’s TV journalists are well known, but it’s a far cry from several decades ago.
This coming Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine takes us back to the 1980s, when WBZ-TV (Channel 4) had a five-member “dream team”: co-anchors Liz Walker and Jack Williams, weather forecaster Bruce Schwoegler, sports reporter Bob Lobel and entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik. Walker, Williams, Lobel, Kulhawik and Barbara Schwoegler, Bruce’s widow, take part in a wide-ranging conversation about what it meant to be local TV news stars some 40 years ago, and why that era ended. (Corporate greed, mostly.) Several of their contemporaries and successors are heard from, too.
Walker, who later became an ordained minister, was the first Black woman to anchor a local newscast in Boston, and — as she recalls — making the transition from her previous post in Little Rock, Arkansas, wasn’t easy:
Really, I had no idea. Boston is a tough city anyway, but in 1980 it was a tough city layered with all the racial implications. People were angry, people were traumatized, because they were still reeling from busing. We couldn’t go to Charlestown, they didn’t send us to Southie, because it was too explosive. You go to Roxbury, and they were just pissed at the media in general. There was no safe space.
The feature is tied in with WBZ’s 75th anniversary. As interesting as it is, I wish the Globe had acknowledged that WBZ was involved in a fierce rivalry during the 1980s with WCVB-TV (Channel 5), which had a dream team of its own: anchors Natalie Jacobson and Chet Curtis, who were married at the time, along with weather forecaster Dick Albert, sports reporter Mike Lynch and entertainment reporter Dixie Whatley. My friend Emily Rooney was assistant news director and, later, news director during those years.
The third network affiliate, Channel 7, which has had various call letters (it’s currently WHDH but is no longer a network affiliate), never established a similar identity, although it did unveil a high-powered anchor team of its own, Robin Young and Tom Ellis, in the 1980s.
