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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
Politico journalists win victory over AI use as News Not Slop campaign launches
Plus Guardian faces 'alt-right agitator' libel trial and how a Canadian streamer hopes news will help it grow
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Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Tuesday, 2 December.
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🤕Move fast and break things has been the mantra of tech companies like Facebook/Meta as they have taken over the world’s media.
But should news publishers adopt the same policy in the scramble to keep up with the quickening pace of change in the AI era?
Journalists at Politico in the US think not and have won an arbitration ruling in a dispute with management over the rollout of automated content tools which led to erroneous content being published without human oversight.
The ruling has fired the starting gun on a wider revolt from US journalists who are alarmed that publishers are using AI to create content without oversight or transparency.
A recent Reuters study found that 83% of UK journalists are concerned that AI will erode trust in journalism.
Large language models struggle with the concept of facts, as Press Gazette found during a recent encounter with ChatGPT after the answer engine stole content from behind our paywall.
So using an LLM to create news content without oversight is, as one executive told me at a recent Press Gazette conference, like putting a drunk intern in charge of your most important activity.
Automate the distribution and technical aspect of production, but not creation, if you want to compete with the bland aggregated AI answers (is my view).
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📺 As the clock ticks down on Comcast’s commitment to fund Sky News (to 2030) and the current BBC licence fee deal (to the end of 2027), it is heartening to see a new model for funding high-quality TV news emerge in Canada.
For Bell Media, news is a key part of their ambition to reach five million TV subscribers.
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⚖️ And a pre-trial libel judgment against The Guardian should make all UK editors take a closer look at reviews and comment pieces before they hit publish.
A judge has found that describing influencer Andy Ngo as an “alt-right agitator” in a music review was defamatory and therefore can proceed to trial. The Guardian will have to argue a defence – such as truth or public interest – if it decides to fight the case. But a potential honest opinion defence has already received a blow.
The judge said: “To allege that a person is actively engaged in promoting far right beliefs tends to harm their reputation in the eyes of right-thinking members of society generally and clearly meets the seriousness threshold at common law.”