Category: Media

Three recent developments show how AI is already changing journalism

Public domain illustration via Pixabay

I don’t want to come off as a total Luddite when it comes to artificial intelligence and journalism. Well, OK, maybe I do. Because even though I have no problem with using AI for certain mindless, repetitive tasks, such as transcribing interviews and finding patterns in public records, I think we need to be cautious about using such tools to actually produce journalism — whether it be reports about real estate transactions (thus missing the opportunity to dig more deeply) or stories about high school sports. With that in mind, I want to call your attention to three troubling developments.

For those who thought the notion of robot reporters was still quite a ways off, the first development is the most alarming. According to a recent article at Nieman Lab by Sophie Culpepper, an independent publisher has been experimenting with just that in his spare time, and the results are, well, not bad.

Mark Talkington, who runs a hyperlocal start-up called The Palm Beach Post in California, has been feeding governmental meetings that are available on YouTube into an AI system designed by a friend of his. Importantly, it’s not an off-the-shelf product like ChatGPT or Google Bard. Rather, it’s been trained on reliable news and information from his coverage area, which reduces if not eliminates the likelihood of “hallucinations,” the term for false but plausible-sounding output produced by AI.

The example Culpepper quoted from reads like what journalism professors disapprovingly tell their students is an “agenda story” — that is, it begins with something like Members of the board of sewer commissioners began their meeting by saluting the flag rather than with a lead grounded in the most interesting thing that happened. Nor has Talkington actually published any AI-generated stories yet. He said in his interview with Culpepper that he’s concerned about AI missing out on body language and, of course, on the ability to snag an elected official in the hallway during a break in the meeting.

But he said he could see using it to take notes and, eventually, to cover meetings that his thinly stretched staff can’t get to. And that’s how it begins: with a sympathetic hyperlocal publisher using AI to extend his reach, only to see the technology adopted by cost-cutting newspaper chains looking to dump reporters.

My second example might be called “speaking of which.” Because Gannett, whose 200 or so daily newspapers make it the largest corporate chain, announced recently that it, too, is experimenting with generative AI. Helen Coster of Reuters reports that, at first, AI will be used to generate content like bullet points that summarize the most important facts in a story, and that humans will check its work. That feature will be rolled out in the chain’s flagship newspaper, USA Today, later this year.

Gannett is hardly the only news organization that’s playing with AI; The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and others are all looking into ways to make use of it. But Gannett is notoriously tight-fisted and, as Coster notes, has slashed and burned its way to tenuous profitability. “Gannett’s journalists are fighting to ensure that they aren’t replaced by the technology,” she wrote. “Hundreds walked off the job over staff cuts and stagnant wages on June 5. Generative AI is a sticking point in some negotiations with the company, the union said.”

The third warning sign comes from Sebastian Grace, who passed along a truly disturbing item that the German tabloid Bild is laying off about 200 journalists while ramping up its use of AI. (Seb recently wrote a fine piece on journalism and AI for our website What Works: The Future of Local News.) Although those two developments at Bild are said to be unrelated, Jon Henley of The Guardian writes that Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Bild’s corporate owner, Axel Springer, has said that ChatGPT and its ilk could “make independent journalism better than it ever was — or replace it.”

Axel Springer, by the way, also owns Politico, an important U.S. outlet for news about politics and public policy.

Do I think AI will soon replace reporters who do the hard work of going out and getting stories? No — at least not right away. But we’ve been losing journalists for 25 years now, and it seems certain that AI will be used, misused and abused in ways that accelerate that trend.

Two Alden papers, the Boston Herald and The Denver Post, will end commenting

Royalty-free photo via Wallpaper Flare

At least two daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group will end reader comments on July 1.

The Boston Herald announced the move earlier today, saying that the change was being made to “dramatically speed up the performance of the website” as well as on its mobile platforms. The Denver Post took the same action last week, although editor Lee Ann Colacioppo cited bad behavior rather than technology, writing that the comment section has become “an uncivil place that drives readers away and opens those trying to engage in thoughtful conversation to hateful, personal attacks.”

Both papers emphasized that readers will still be able to talk back at them through social media platforms.

Wondering if this were a MediaNews-wide action, I tried searching about a half-dozen papers in the 60-daily chain and could find no similar announcements. I found something else interesting as well. The eight larger dailies that comprise the Tribune Publishing chain, which Alden acquired a couple of years ago, are now included as part of MediaNews Group, although they are still listed separately as well. (A ninth, the Daily News of New York, was split off from Tribune and is being run as a separate entity.)

The moves by the Herald and the Post represent just the latest in the long, sad story of user comments. When they debuted about a quarter-century ago, they were hailed as a way of involving the audience — the “former audience,” as Dan Gillmor and Jay Rosen put it. The hope was that comments could even advance stories.

It turned out that comments were embraced mainly by the most sociopathic elements. Some publishers (including me for a while) required real names, but that didn’t really help. The only measure that ensures a civil platform is pre-screening — a comment doesn’t appear online until someone has read it and approved it. But that takes resources, and very few news organizations are willing to make the investment.

The best comments section I know of belongs to the New Haven Independent, where pre-screening has been the rule right from the start. Keeping out racist, homophobic hate speech opens up the forum for other voices to be heard. The New York Times engages in pre-screening as well.

So kudos to the Boston Herald and The Denver Post — and I hope other news outlets, including The Boston Globe, will follow suit.

From Walter Lippmann, a cautionary tale about seeing what we wish to see in Russia

As we wait to see how Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion against the Russian government turns out, it’s worth remembering that Walter Lippmann conceived of objectivity as a response to the Western press’ — and especially The New York Times’ — being guided by wishful thinking in its coverage of the Russian Revolution. And here we are again.

As Lippmann disparagingly observed more than 100 years ago, the thrust of Western coverage was that the Bolshevik forces and, later, the nascent Soviet state were bound to fall. In “Liberty and the News” (1920), Lippmann and his co-author, Charles Merz, wrote:

In the large, the news about Russia is a case of seeing not what was, but what men wished to see…. From the point of view of professional journalism the reporting of the Russian Revolution is nothing short of a disaster. On the essential questions the net effect was almost always misleading, and misleading news is worse than none at all.

We don’t know what’s going to happen in the hours and days ahead. Prigozhin has come out against Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, and so of course we hope Prigozhin might somehow prevail, even though his venality is at least the equal of Putin’s. If nothing else, it seems logical that chaos in Russia is good news for Ukraine.

As a number of observers have lamented, the days when you could curate a reliable news feed on Twitter are over — although Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has put together a good list of analysts tweeting about the Ukraine crisis. I’m also following live coverage at the Times (which is behind a paywall) and at BBC News (which is free). And hoping for the best.

How the Globe and Beacon Press helped Daniel Ellsberg publish the Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg. Photo (cc) 2020 by Christopher Michel.

There are a couple of Boston angles to the Pentagon Papers, the government’s own secret history of the Vietnam War. The documents were leaked to the press in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg, who died Friday at the age of 92.

Most people know that the papers were published first by The New York Times and then by The Washington Post. The story of the Post’s race to catch up with the Times is depicted in “The Post,” a 2017 film starring Tom Hanks. What is less well known is that The Boston Globe was the third paper to publish the documents. Former Globe editor Matt Storin wrote about the Globe’s role in a 2008 reminiscence (free link):

It was a significant milestone in the effort of the Globe’s editor, Tom Winship, to lift a formerly modest local paper to national prominence. Before that day in 1971, the Globe had won a single Pulitzer Prize. Since then, it has won 19 more. [And seven more since then.]

It was no accident that the Globe was one of the first three papers, either. “I definitely chose the Globe … because it had been great on the war,” Ellsberg told Storin. The tale Storin relates is pretty wild. Ellsberg, who had access to the documents as an analyst with the RAND Corp., had made a copy of them. The news of the documents’ existence was broken by Globe reporter Tom Oliphant after he interviewed Ellsberg, which in turn led Ellsberg to make still more copies and start disseminating them to the press before the FBI could come calling.

The whole story, including phone-booth document drops and the decision to hide the papers in the trunk of a car parked at the Globe, is well told by Storin.

The other Boston angle is that Beacon Press, a small independent book publisher that is part of the Unitarian Universalist Association, published the Pentagon Publishers after a number of other houses passed on the opportunity because of the legal risks involved. The Beacon Blog quotes Gayatni Patnaik, Beacon’s current director:

Daniel Ellsberg’s incredible fortitude stands as an example for all who believe in fighting for democracy and government accountability and who oppose war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We are incredibly proud to have taken the stand we did in releasing the Pentagon Papers. Today, over 50 years later, we are still guided by the principles that led to that brave decision.

Thanks to Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub for flagging that item. And by the way, Beacon is also the publisher of “What Works in Community News,” co-authored by Ellen Clegg and me, which is scheduled to be released in early 2024.

Three face federal charges in vandalism and harassment targeting NHPR journalists

Federal authorities have charged three men in the vandalism and harassment case involving two journalists at New Hampshire Public Radio. In the press release below, issued Friday by the U.S. attorney’s office for Massachusetts, “Victim 1” is NHPR reporter Lauren Chooljian; “Victim 2” is her editor, Dan Barrick; and “Subject 1” is Eric Spofford, the founder New Hampshire’s largest network of addiction treatment centers.

Spofford has denied any involvement in or knowledge of the vandalism. He has filed a libel suit against Chooljian and NHPR, which drew the attention of The New York Times (free link) after a judge ordered that NHPR let him examine the transcripts of interviews so that he can determine if they are relevant to Spofford’s claim. The full press release is as follows:

BOSTON — Three New Hampshire men have been charged in connection with a conspiracy to harass and intimidate two New Hampshire journalists employed by New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR). The alleged harassment and intimidation of the victims included the vandalism — on five separate occasions — of the victims’ homes, as well as the vandalism of the home of one of the victim’s immediate family members with bricks, large rocks and red spray paint.

Tucker Cockerline, 32, of Salem, N.H., Michael Waselchuck, 35, of Seabrook, N.H. and Keenan Saniatan, 36, of Nashua, N.H. were each charged by criminal complaint with conspiring to commit stalking through interstate travel. Cockerline and Waselchuck were arrested this morning and, following an initial appearance in federal court in Boston this afternoon, were detained pending a hearing scheduled for June 20, 2023 at 2 p.m. Saniatan remains at large.

“The critical role that the press plays in our society goes back to the founding of our nation. Today’s charges should send a clear message that the Department of Justice will not tolerate harassment or intimidation of journalists. If you engage in this type of vicious and vindictive behavior you will be held accountable,” said Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy.

“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of any healthy democracy and these three men are now accused of infringing on that freedom by conspiring to harass and intimidate two New Hampshire journalists who were simply doing their jobs,” said Christopher DiMenna, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division. “Everyone has a right to express their opinion, but taking it over the line and committing vandalism will not be tolerated.”

According to the charging document, after a year-long investigation, an NHPR journalist (Victim 1) published an article in March 2022 detailing allegations of sexual and other misconduct by a former New Hampshire businessperson, identified in the charging document as Subject 1. Another NHPR journalist (Victim 2) also contributed to the article, which appeared on NHPR’s website during and after March 2022. Thereafter, it is alleged that Cockerline, Waselchuck and Saniatan conspired with each other and with at least one other individual – allegedly identified as a close personal associate of Subject 1 — to retaliate against NHPR and Victims 1 and 2 by vandalizing the victims’ homes with bricks and large rocks, as well as spray-painting lewd and threatening language on the homes’ exteriors. It is alleged that the following acts of vandalisms occurred in April and May 2022:

  • At approximately 11:00 p.m. on April 24, 2022, a brick was thrown through a front exterior window of Victim’s 1’s former residence in Hanover, N.H. The word “C*NT” was spray-painted in large red letters on the front door;
  • On the evening of April 24, 2022 or during the early morning hours of April 25, 2022, the word “C*NT” was spray-painted in large red letters on the front door of Victim 2’s home in Concord, N.H. The exterior of the home was also damaged by a large rock, which appeared to have been thrown at the house;
  • Shortly before midnight on April 24, 2022 or during the early morning hours of April 25, 2022, a softball-sized rock was thrown through a front exterior window of Victim 1’s parents’ home in Hampstead, N.H. The word “C*NT” was spray-painted in large red letters on one of the garage doors;
  • At approximately 12:54 a.m. on May 21, 2022, Victim 1’s parents’ home in Hampstead was vandalized a second time. The word “C*NT” was spray-painted in large red letters on one of the garage doors. Although no windows were broken, a brick was discovered on the ground near the house’s foundation as if it had been thrown at the house; and
  • At approximately 5:54 a.m. on May 21, 2022, a brick was thrown through an exterior window of Victim 1’s house in Melrose, Mass. The phrase “JUST THE BEGINNING” was spray-painted in large red letters on the front of the home.

The charging documents allege that Cockerline, Saniatan and Waselchuck are responsible for committing all five of these vandalisms.

The charge of conspiracy to commit interstate stalking carries a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000 and restitution.  Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case.

Acting U.S. Attorney Levy and FBI Acting SAC DiMenna made the announcement today. Valuable assistance was provided by the Concord, Hampstead and Hanover, New Hampshire Police Departments and the Melrose, Massachusetts Police Department. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire provided valuable assistance. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jason A. Casey and Torey B. Cummings of Levy’s Criminal Division are prosecuting the case.

The details contained in the charging documents are allegations. The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Earlier

The Fred Ryan era at the Post had run its course. Killing Launcher proved it.

Photo (cc) 2016 by Dan Kennedy

Back in January, The Washington Post was struggling, and publisher Fred Ryan had some difficult decisions to make. What he chose was to eliminate 20 newsroom positions and leave another 30 openings unfilled. Oh, and there was this: He decided (or, at the very least, agreed) to phase out Launcher, a Post vertical devoted to covering video games, and lay off the site’s five staff members.

At a time when the Post was fighting for ways to differentiate itself from its larger rival, The New York Times, Launcher should have been considered a key part of that strategy. Gaming is the largest entertainment medium, larger than movies and music combined. And Launcher was doing well. As editor Mike Hume tweeted, the move was “sad, upsetting, and perhaps most of all, mindboggling,” adding that Launcher had drawn “tens of millions of users, the majority first-time readers of The Post and almost all of them under the age of 40.”

Kat Bailey put it this way at IGN:

In the video game world, Launcher made a name for itself as a high-quality games media site with a focus on first-rate reporting, often taking the lead on difficult stories beyond the scope of the traditional enthusiast press. It stood out as one of the few examples of serious games reporting in a legacy newspaper, often landing major interviews and exclusives as a result.

It’s been obvious for quite some time that the Post needs a major reset. After years of growth, profits and what owner Jeff Bezos once called “swagger,” the paper has been stumbling since Donald Trump left the White House. Paid digital subscriptions are down from about 3 million to about 2.5 million, traffic to its website is on the wane, and the paper is losing money.

So it may have been met with a huge sigh of relief when Ryan announced Monday that he was stepping down as publisher and CEO. “I’m deeply grateful to Fred for his leadership and for the friendship that we’ve developed over the years,” Bezos wrote, according to an account of Ryan’s departure in The Wall Street Journal. Ryan told the staff in a note: “Together, we have accomplished one of the most extraordinary transformations in modern media history. We have evolved from a primarily local print newspaper to become a global digital publication.”

I didn’t interview Ryan when I was reporting on the Post’s revival in 2015 and ’16 for my book “The Return of the Moguls.” (I didn’t interview Bezos, either, but that’s a long story involving emails, snail mail and phone calls. Suffice to say he doesn’t give interviews to anyone, even the Post.) I spoke with then-executive editor Marty Baron and then-chief technologist Shailesh Prakash, who were leading the Post’s revival. I made a few attempts to connect with Ryan, but it didn’t happen. In any case, Baron and Prakash were the ones who were doing the transformational work.

So I was fascinated with Charlotte Klein’s account of the Post’s decline in Vanity Fair earlier this year. Bezos had paid a rare visit to the Post, and everyone was wondering what it all meant. At the time, it seemed like Ryan was feeling empowered with legends like Baron and Prakash having moved on. There was even talk that Baron’s replacement, Sally Buzbee, was musing with her inner circle that she might leave if Ryan didn’t stay in his lane. But in reporting on Ryan’s departure Monday, Klein writes that Buzbee had smoothed things over in recent months even as Bezos has been a more visible presence.

“Bezos, I’m told, has brought refreshing candor to the discussions, in which he’s asked about things like the Post’s paywall strategy and, notably, plan for growing subscriptions,” Klein writes. “At times, he sharply questioned Ryan, one of the sources said.”

For now, the Post will be led by an interim CEO, Patty Stonesifer, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The way forward is not clear at all. Being just like the Times, only smaller and not as good, is not a business strategy. The Post is still a great newspaper, rivaled only by the Times and The Wall Street Journal. But it needs to find its own identify, as the Journal has with an emphasis on business news and a right-wing editorial page. (I’m not suggesting that the Post emulate the Journal’s opinion section; the Post’s is bad enough already.)

More than anything, the Post needs to identify coverage areas that the Times has ignored and doesn’t seem to be interested in. Like, you know, video games. Did I mention that it’s the largest entertainment medium in the country, and that Launcher was bringing in tens of millions of young readers before the Post decided to shut it down? Yes. Yes, I did.

NHPR case illustrates the limits of actual malice

U.S. Supreme Court. Photo (cc) by Kjetil Ree

The harassment endured by Lauren Chooljian, a reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio, is frightening and horrifying. David Enrich of The New York Times reported last week (free link) that Chooljian, her parents and her editor have been subjected to vandalism and threats after she reported on sexual misconduct allegations against Eric Spofford, who founded the state’s largest network of addiction treatment centers.

Spofford denies having anything to do with the vandalism. But there’s an interesting wrinkle to the case that I want to discuss, and that’s Spofford’s libel suit against Chooljian and NHPR. Because of Spofford’s prominence, he has been designated as a public figure, which means that he must show actual malice (as well as falsity and defamation) in order to win his suit. Actual malice, as you probably know, requires that the plaintiff prove the defendant published the offending material despite knowing or strongly suspecting it was false.

NHPR has been ordered by Judge Daniel St. Hilaire to turn over transcripts of interviews, including with anonymous sources. “Legal experts,” Enrich wrote, “called the ruling unusual and alarming, saying such decisions could make it harder for journalists to investigate potential wrongdoing by public figures.” And Enrich quoted one of those experts, Chad Bowman, as saying it was “‘deeply troubling’ for a judge to force journalists to hand over unpublished materials when the plaintiff hadn’t yet made a viable legal claim.”

The last part of that statement is the key: Spofford has not yet presented the sort of evidence that would suggest he could win if allowed to proceed. St. Hilaire seems to be putting the cart before the horse. But if Spofford does have a viable case, then he’s entitled to gather the evidence he needs to pursue it. Remember, he needs to prove actual malice. That means it’s essential that he be allowed to probe the inner workings of Chooljian’s and NHPR’s reporting and editing processes to see whether they knew what they were broadcasting was false or if they harbored any serious doubts about it.

At one time libel had been regarded as what you might call a no-fault tort. That is, if you could show that you had been defamed with falsehoods, then you would win your case, regardless of the news organization’s motivation. In the 1974 case of Gertz v. Robert Welch, however, the Supreme Court ruled that even private individuals would have to prove negligence. With at least two members of the current Supreme Court, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, having suggested they’d like to revisit libel law, it’s worth thinking about whether negligence might be a better standard than actual malice, even for public officials and public figures.

The problem with actual malice has always been that though it makes it extremely difficult for a plaintiff to win a libel suit against the news media, it also gives the plaintiff entree into a news outlet’s private communications. Consider that, in 2005, The Boston Globe lost a libel suit brought by a doctor in the case of Betsy Lehman, a Globe reporter who died after receiving a massive overdose of a chemotherapy drug. In that case, the judge ruled that Dr. Lois Ayash won what turned out to be a $2 million judgment by default after the Globe refused to turn over its confidential sources, as the judge had ordered.

Ayash was entitled to that information, but there was no way the Globe was going to betray its confidential sources. If a negligence standard had been in effect rather than actual malice, then the jury could have determined whether the Globe had acted negligently without probing into its reporting processes.

So, too, with the NHPR case. The problem here, again, is that it’s not clear whether Chooljian reported anything that was false. Truth is almost always considered an absolute defense in a libel case, which is why Judge St. Hilaire seems to be acting prematurely. Nevertheless, the case is a good illustration of why actual malice — defined in the landmark Times v. Sullivan case in 1964 — may have been a mistake, and why negligence may be a more workable standard.

Chris Licht understood what was wrong with CNN but had no idea of how to fix it

Photo (cc) 2010 by CNN Center

I started out writing a much longer post about Tim Alberta’s astonishing 15,000-word takedown of CNN’s now officially embattled CEO, Chris Licht. But I decided there’s really no need. You can read Alberta’s story for yourself along with Jon Allsop’s analysis for the Columbia Journalism Review of what it all means, Brian Stelter’s article at New York magazine on the chaotic aftermath inside CNN, and Benjamin Mullin’s story in The New York Times on Jeff Zucker, Licht’s bitter and scheming predecessor.

Rather than add to that, I want to focus instead on one small point that shows Licht sort of/kind of had the right idea. While speaking to a student group, Alberta writes, “Licht sought to differentiate CNN from both networks — slamming Fox News for being a duplicitous propaganda outfit, and rebuking MSNBC for trafficking in hysteria.”

Licht has been talking this way from the moment he ascended to the top of CNN, and it’s why I was willing to cut him some slack despite misguided decisions such as firing Stelter, the network’s excellent media reporter. The problem, it seems, is that he understood CNN’s problems correctly but superficially and thus wasn’t really able to execute.

CNN didn’t need to move from the left back toward the center or to be more polite to authoritarian right-wingers, as Licht seems to think. Rather, it needed to readjust the balance between opinion and reporting.

Of course, it’s fair to ask who is really calling the shots at CNN — Licht or his overlords, David Zaslav, the head of Warner Bros Discovery, and right-wing billionaire John Malone, who owns a significant chunk of the company. It all fell apart when CNN’s town hall event with Donald Trump turned into a disaster in exactly the ways in which everyone had predicted — with Trump simply yelling lies in the face of his well-prepared but overwhelmed host, Kaitlan Collins, while the Trumper crowd hooted and hollered off stage.

You may have heard that another media executive, David Leavy, has been brought in as CNN’s chief operating officer, a significant wing-clipping for Licht, who has presided over a steep decline in ratings, revenue and morale. It seems hard to believe that Licht can survive the humiliation, much of it self-inflicted, that he endured in Alberta’s piece.

It’s equally hard to know where CNN should go from here. A return to Zucker’s clown show (Chris and Andrew Cuomo, anyone?) would hardly restore the reputation of a still-great news organization whose on-air product often fails to match the excellence of its journalists.

CNN is just as much in need of a reset today as it was when Licht took over.

Earlier: