from the I’m-Sorry-I-Can’t-Do-That,-Dave dept
The rushed integration of half-cooked automation into the already broken U.S. journalism industry simply isn’t going very well. There’s been just countless examples where affluent media owners rushed to embrace automation and LLMs (usually to cut corners and undermine labor) with disastrous impact, resulting in lots of plagiarism, completely false headlines, and a giant, completely avoidable mess.
Earlier this month, we noted how Politico is among the major media companies rushing to embrace AI without really thinking things through or ensuring the technology actually works first. They’ve implemented “AI” systems –without transparently informing staff — that generate articles rife with all sorts of gibberish and falsehoods (this Brian Merchant post is a must read to understand the scope).
Politico management also recently introduced another AI “report builder” for premium Politico PRO subscribers that’s supposed to offer a breakdown of existing Politico reporter analysis of complicated topics. But here too the automation constantly screws up, conflating politicians and generating all sorts of errors that, for some incoherent reason, isn’t reviewed by Politico editors.
Actual human Politico journalists are understandably not pleased with any of this, especially because the nontransparent introduction of the new automation was in direct violation of the editorial union’s contract struck just last year. So unionized Politico employees have since been battling with Politico via arbitration.
On July 11, the PEN Guild (which has about 250 Politico union members) and Politico held an arbitration hearing to determine whether the publication had broken its collective bargaining agreement. Nieman Lab obtained access to the arbitration hearing transcript, at which Politico higher up editors tried to claim that automation shouldn’t be held to the same editorial standards as humans.
Specifically asked about the problems with Report Builder, deputy editor-in-chief Joe Schatz insisted that because Report Builder was technically built by coders, and its output isn’t reviewed by professional editors (which is insane) it shouldn’t have to adhere to the site’s broader editorial standards:
“He went on to argue that Report Builder sits “outside the newsroom,” since Politico’s product and engineering teams built the tool and editorial workers don’t review its outputs. As a result, he said, the AI-generated reports should not be held to the newsroom’s editorial standards.”
That’s… incoherent. LLMs are tools, they’re not inherently exempt from editorial standards and material reality just because management is bullish on AI. The CEO of Politico Owner Axel Springer, Mathias Döpfner, recently introduced a company wide mandate that every single employee in the organization has to not only use AI, but consistently file reports justifying why they don’t. It’s rather… cultish.
This tap dancing around what constitutes “newsgathering” is effectively a way for Politico management to try and tap dance around their contract with union employees, since said contract plainly states:
“If AI technology is used by Politico or its employees to supplement or assist in their newsgathering, such as the collection, organization, recording or maintenance of information, it must be done in compliance with Politico’s standards of journalistic ethics and involve human oversight.”
Again, most U.S. media is owned by affluent older, white, Conservative men who generally see AI not as a way to make their products or employees’ lives better or more efficient, but as a way to cut corners and undermine already underpaid labor. Men like Döpfner, who like our authoritarian President, and whose editorial standards and relationship with labor were pretty fucking shaky to begin with.
These men want to create a fully automated ad engagement ouroboros that effectively shits money without having to pay humans a living wage, and that goal is evident everywhere you look.
In an ideal world this would result in surging demand for intelligent, savvy journalism and analysis by competent, experienced people who actually have something to say. But this isn’t an ideal world, and increasingly the kind of folks dictating the trajectory of U.S. media (and automation) are routinely demonstrating they lack any sort of ethical competency for the honor.
Filed Under: ai, automation, generative ai, journalism, labor, llms, media, newsrooms, politico, unions
Companies: axel springer, politico
