Impress Insights: The biggest danger AI poses to newsrooms and why a serious hoax is inevitable
Andrea Wills: The biggest danger AI poses to newsrooms and why a serious hoax is inevitable
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Stories about the good, bad and ugly sides of Artificial Intelligence yo-yo in and out of the news on an almost daily basis.
I’m a bit of an AI cynic myself and don’t tend to be particularly impressed by the latest advances in AI hardware and software. But that doesn’t mean I shy away from keeping up with the way it is impacting journalism practices.
It was the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, followed by Bard six months later, that began to highlight the pitfalls that generative AI solutions create for publishers whether in the form of text, images, video or audio.
Personally, I’ve had some fun with different generative AI models, writing poems, a resume for my sister, and producing various realistic looking images based on my prompts.
However, the unethical use of such models has left me cold. I couldn’t believe that a German news outlet approved the publication of a completely made-up ‘‘exclusive interview” with F1 champion Michel Schumacher, who’s not been seen in public since a near fatal skiing accident in 2013. Nor the TikTok clips, now removed, showing AI-generated likenesses of missing or murdered children, including Madeleine McCann and James Bulger. Or the deep fake scam video advert, which shows a very convincing synthetic Martin Lewis, apparently endorsing a new project from Elon Musk called ‘Quantum AI’.
Generative AI learns from available data and generates new data from its knowledge – and therein lies the problem for journalists. Alongside the intentional use of AI by unscrupulous people to deliberately mislead it’s important to know that generative AI frequently makes mistakes producing inaccurate and often downright fake content.
Therefore, it can’t be used by journalists as a credible source of information.
This specific downside – generating new data from its knowledge – has already led to numerous problems, including the invention of non-existent sources, like those described in the Guardian in April 2023 after it had discovered ChatGPT had made up Guardian articles as fake sources. This has been described as the “hallucinatory element” of the language model – it literally makes up information that isn’t there.
In America, a judge fined lawyers $5000 in an aviation injury claim. They had submitted bogus case law created by ChatGPT. The judge said “Technological advances are commonplace and there is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance. But existing rules impose a gatekeeping role on attorneys to ensure the accuracy of their filings.”
The same gatekeeping role applies to publishers, particularly in relation to the use of digital third-party content. Can you really believe all you see, hear and read? I believe it’s only a matter of time before there’s a digital hoax that fools even the most careful journalists and has real life consequences. In May 2023, for example, many people were caught out when a fake image went viral, that apparently showed a large explosion near the Pentagon in the USA.
Unfortunately, there’s no completely reliable way of technically detecting a deepfake although various companies are trying to develop such a tool. Journalists need to employ their verification skills, editorial judgement and trust their gut instincts and, if in doubt, don’t publish.
What seems to be working well in some newsrooms is the use of generative AI for those repetitive and less interesting tasks like writing summaries, bullet points and suggesting headlines about a specific story. But beware – even if you use a generative AI language model to work with your own material, it can still take things that aren’t even there or use a quote in a headline that wasn’t said. That’s why the Impress Standards Code says, “Publishers must ensure human editorial oversight and clear labelling of AI-generated content.”
But perhaps the biggest danger for publishers now is the lack of knowledge amongst their news teams about AI. At the very least, alert them to the “hallucinatory element” and the dangers it brings and make sure they are accountable for their reporting, whatever technology they use.
By Andrea Wills
Journalist, Broadcaster and Media Consultant
About Andrea Wills
Andrea Wills has exceptional experience in broadcasting regulation, standard setting, and investigating serious editorial failings in the UK and Australia. She was Independent Editorial Adviser to the BBC Trust and investigated over 60 complaints about BBC content over the decade it existed. She began her career as a journalist and news editor in local radio, moved to television as an executive producer, before joining the BBC’s Editorial Policy team as its Chief Adviser. In Australia she worked for the ABC in Sydney, conducting independent reviews of broadcast content, developing editorial and media ethics standards, and training senior journalists.
About Impress
Impress is a champion for news that can be trusted. We are here to make sure news providers can publish with integrity; and the public can engage in an ever-changing media landscape with confidence. We set the highest regulatory standards for news, offer education to help people make informed choices and provide resolution when disputes arise.
Media enquiries
Louie Chandler: louie@impressorg.com / 02033076778
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Impress Insights: How to create a marketing plan for your publication (and how NOT to!)
Pam Vick: How to create a marketing plan for your publication (and how NOT to!)
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“I need a new website or brochure!”
As a business development and marketing consultant, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard this when I have asked prospective clients what they need in terms of help when they call me.
My answer is always “Why?” and their response is often “Because I don’t have one” or “Because we need a new one”.
This is 100% starting from the wrong end of a business development/marketing plan, pure and simple. And the issue is the same whether you are marketing a can of beans or an offline (or online) publication.
So here’s what I tell these business owners when they call me. This is obviously an overview, and every business is different, but I have 500 words – so hopefully it’ll still help.
Firstly, work out what your objective is and your target market. For example; “I want to attract new, younger users to my publication” or “I want existing readers to spend more time engaging with the website” or “I need more people in Wales to subscribe to my newsletter”.
Who exactly do you need to influence – how old are they, where do they live, what do they do both professionally (if they work) and for leisure, what attitudes link them, who influences them, what organisations might they be members of? These are just a few examples. Thinking about a typical day in their life and writing it down can often help you think about how best to engage with them.
From here you can create a “touchpoints” plan in terms of the various places in their day/life where you might be able to engage with them, and the marketing channels that would therefore be most cost effective in terms of reaching them.
Think too about marketing partnerships with other organisations that don’t compete with you but have the same target community – perhaps offer their members a special deal. Especially if they are a large brand with a big community of members of the type of people you want to reach, partnership marketing can be incredibly cost-effective and efficient.
Now you can start to think about your key messaging. What is in it for them, in terms of what you are asking them to do/do more of? Don’t talk about yourself and what you want them to do. This is important. Think about how and why what you want them to do is going to benefit THEM.
And only once you’ve worked through all of the above should you even start to think about what content or collaterals or features or materials or copy you need.
And the answer is usually NOT a brochure.
By Pam Vick
Business Development and Marketing Consultant
About Pam Vick
Pam Vick is a member of the Impress board, a highly regarded commercial business development and strategic consultant to boards. She is an Ambassador for Women on Boards UK and one of Boardroom Advisors’ most experienced Advisors, an organisation that provides part-Time CEOs, exec directors and NEDs internationally. Pam is also a NED on the board of Hendeca, a specialist health and safety provider, a Trustee of The British Ecological Society, sits on an Advisory Board for the charity DEBRA, is a member of the Chairman’s Network, and has contributed to advertising effectiveness textbooks and articles including IPA Advertising Effectiveness Awards.
About Impress
Impress is a champion for news that can be trusted. We are here to make sure news providers can publish with integrity; and the public can engage in an ever-changing media landscape with confidence. We set the highest regulatory standards for news, offer education to help people make informed choices and provide resolution when disputes arise.
Media enquiries
Louie Chandler: louie@impressorg.com / 02033076778
Latest Posts
Impress Insights: High press standards and freedom of expression can go hand in hand
Richard Ayre: High press standards and freedom of expression can go hand in hand
This blog comes from our Impress Insights newsletter! If you want to be the first to hear the latest analysis and opinions from industry experts, head to our homepage and sign up!
I woke up one morning at the age of sixteen and knew I wanted to be a journalist. It took me by surprise and, when I went down to breakfast and told my parents, it left them in a state of shock as well.
Back upstairs, I sat at my Imperial typewriter and hammered out a blistering criticism of the ethical standards of the local newspaper (name withheld owing to the passage of time) and posted it off to the Editor, exhorting him to show his readers his commitment to freedom of expression by publishing it. Oddly enough, he didn’t.
Freedom of expression means different things to different people. To editors it means they should be able to publish whatever they like, especially if someone somewhere is trying to stop them. But it certainly doesn’t mean they have to give a platform to people they disagree with.
It’s one of the great liberties the British press enjoys, that – unlike public service broadcasters – they can be as partisan, as opinionated, and even as downright biased as they wish. For many millions of us, we buy into partisan journalism, when it suits, either in print form or online. It often feeds – and sometimes even seeds – our own opinions.
But the British public is perhaps the most news-literate in the world. For three centuries we’ve had a robust array of domestic journals to draw upon and now we have the added benefit that our own language is the lingua franca of the online world.
So we Brits are good at judging when we’re simply being told what we want to hear and when we’re being told the truth, and we know that the two aren’t necessarily the same. When the chips are down, when there’s a story that really matters to us, we want the unvarnished truth and each of us decides which media to turn to for it.
Being truthful is perhaps the single most important ethical standard that Impress expects of its member publications. It’s none of our business what opinions our publishers hold (provided they are expressed within the law) but they must not be evidenced with falsehoods.
Overwhelmingly, journalists come into the profession to discover the truth and to tell it to as many people as possible. Readers may prefer publications that share their own point of view, but they don’t like being misled or taken for fools. Trust is the most hard-won asset in a journalist’s armoury, and it’s also the easiest to lose.
Impress will always stand up for freedom of the press and for the widest possible spectrum of voices to be heard. But it will expect integrity in the way news publishers treat their readers. Discovering the truth is often very difficult, sometimes impossible. But readers have a right to expect us to try. Truth matters to them, whatever their point of view.
And the really good news is that telling the truth also helps journalists sleep at night.
By Richard Ayre
Chair, Impress
About Richard Ayre
Richard Ayre has had a career in journalism spanning forty years, beginning in the early 1970s at the BBC in Belfast and going on to become the corporation’s controller of editorial policy and deputy chief executive of BBC News. He is a former member of the Ofcom Content Board and chair of its Broadcast Review Committee, and also chaired Article 19, the international freedom of expression charity. For fourteen years he was the Law Society’s freedom of information adjudicator before returning to the BBC as a member of the BBC Trust and chair of its editorial standards committee.
About Impress
Impress is a champion for news that can be trusted. We are here to make sure news providers can publish with integrity; and the public can engage in an ever-changing media landscape with confidence. We set the highest regulatory standards for news, offer education to help people make informed choices and provide resolution when disputes arise.
Media enquiries
Louie Chandler: louie@impressorg.com / 02033076778
Latest Posts
Impress Insights: How we can protect independent journalism amid major policy changes
Impress Insights: How we can protect independent journalism amid major policy changes
This blog comes from our Impress Insights newsletter! If you want to be the first to hear the latest analysis and opinions from industry experts, head to our homepage and sign up!
It’s been a busy two months here at Impress. The Online Safety Bill – which is set to regulate how platforms deal with illegal and harmful content, but could also implicate news websites with below the line comments – should be concluded by the end of this year. Impress advocated for our publishers to be exempted from Ofcom oversight on the basis that they are already well-regulated, and to ensure bad faith actors could not pose as news organisations and undermine the professionalism and credibility of the sector.
Publishers regulated by Impress will benefit from automatic exemption under the new law. We expect the Government to apply the same common sense when the Digital Markets Unit is given powers to redress the balance between platforms and publishers, should the Digital Markets Bill become law.
Additionally, after years of threats, the Conservative Government is determined to repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act in its upcoming Media Bill – the only incentive in law for news publishers to be regulated and one of the few legal protections for Impress-regulated titles from vexatious legal attacks such as SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation).
In thinking about the ways laws, regulation and policy can best protect publishers’ operating conditions and freedom of expression, I hope to be in dialogue with publishers, policymaker and communities about the way forward. In the interim we are keeping an ear to the ground on the most pressing issues affecting journalism, whether it be unlocking the revenue model for independent media, the opportunities and challenges of generative AI, and, of course, the ongoing perils of SLAPPs, particularly against investigative journalism.
We will continue to robustly defend regulated publishers, even as existing legal protections are hollowed out and will continue to provide you with further updates on media policy throughout the year.
Following the recent launch of our new website and our revised Standards Code we will soon be launching a consultation into our Arbitration Scheme. Importantly, no Impress publisher has ever been successfully sued in the courts, in part because our media law arbitration scheme – the first of its kind to be recognised in the UK – works to triage and prevent claims reaching the costly and time-consuming route of full-scale litigation.
That does not mean we are not alive to the concerns of those publishers and claimants who have been through the arbitration process, and hope the consultation will provide clarity, flexibility and reduce costs even further. Together I hope we can and will continue to build a better self-regulatory system for journalism.
I recognise that making the case for news that can be trusted is not a solo effort but something done through collaboration. Impress has attended industry conferences and events to promote that vision, and is building up its catalogue of support through partnerships with key industry stakeholders. To that end, I’m pleased that this month we have committed to partnerships with Legitimate, and the Independent Media Association. We are always on the look out for more organisations to partner with so do get in touch!
Finally, during my first two months as CEO, my focus has been building out our new senior management team alongside setting the vision and strategy for the organisation. I know everyone working for Impress has a passion for journalism and its democratic and community-building function, so I am very pleased to welcome Catherine Campbell (Regulatory Services Manager) and Thomas Barlow (Business Manager) to Impress. We hope to have some more new team announcements very soon – so keep your eyes peeled!
About Impress
Impress is a champion for news that can be trusted. We are here to make sure news providers can publish with integrity; and the public can engage in an ever-changing media landscape with confidence. We set the highest regulatory standards for news, offer education to help people make informed choices and provide resolution when disputes arise.
Media enquiries
Louie Chandler: louie@impressorg.com / 02033076778
