Journalism Today. 26 Nov 2024

By Eduardo Suárez and Gretel Kahn

??? 3 top news stories

1. Will AI-generated slop kill journalism? Low-quality, often inaccurate AI-generated text, images and video are quietly conquering the internet. This kind of content is called slop and is driven by the goal of reaching as many people as possible with the least amount of effort. Is this phenomenon a threat to the news ecosystem? Our colleague Marina Adami spoke to three experts to respond to this question. Her piece includes the voices of Professor Sandra Wachter from the Oxford Internet Institute, McKenzie Sadeghi from NewsGuard, and AI expert David Caswell.?

• Two opposing views. “The thing that is most dangerous to a democratic society is not a liar, it's a bullshitter,” said Professor Wachter. “Slop is like spam. In the early days of email, it was completely out of control. But then we learned how to take care of it, and how to minimise it,” said Caswell. | Read

2. Several journalism-oriented organisations leave X. Two institutions have just announced they would no longer post on X. On Monday the Knight First Amendment Institute issued this statement. Amongst the factors they mention are “the subordination of public interest to private caprice, the consolidation of influence over public discourse in the hands of a few (or even just one), and the reliance on business models and monetisation schemes that preclude a functional marketplace of ideas.”

• European journalists follow suit. On Tuesday the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) said it won’t post on X from 20 January 2025, when Elon Musk is officially joining the Donald Trump Administration. “X has become the preferred vector for conspiracy theories, racism, far-right ideas and misogynistic rhetoric. It no longer serves the public interest, but the ideological and financial interests of its owner and his political allies,” said EFJ President Maja Sever. | Read their statement

?? From our archive. According to survey data collected in January 2024, around 25% of Americans used X for any purpose and 14% used the platform for news. So, at least earlier this year, Facebook (29%) and YouTube (24%) were much more important in terms of US news consumption than Musk’s platform. | Read

3. An AI bot to interrogate your country’s budget. The Philippines has one of the world’s most transparent budgeting systems. But ordinary citizens rarely get involved in the process. One of the reasons is the sheer size of the files. Opening them on a typical laptop often leads to frozen screens. Extracting any meaningful data requires using a professional tool or coding in Python or R, and there is no guide: if you’re a journalist, you would need to know the nuances of how the document is encoded to find exactly what you’re looking for.?

• A solution. This is the problem Filipino journalist Jaemark Tordecilla wanted to solve when he created the Budget Bot, a Custom GPT that makes it easy for everyone to interrogate the Philippines' budget and to find the news stories government officials are not highlighting in their press releases. In a new piece, he explains why he created the bot, how he refined it and how he's improving it. | Read

?? From our archive. This is not Tordecilla's first AI experiment. Back in February he explained how he had created a bot to promote watchdog journalism in his native Philippines. | Read

?? Chart of the day

??? What people use GenAI for. According to a survey we did across six countries earlier this year, roughly equal proportions said they use generative AI for getting information as they do for creating media. Just 5% say they have used any AI tool to get the latest news, a lower proportion than most of the other uses. One reason for this is that the free version of ChatGPT, the most widely used tool, is not yet connected to the web. This is beginning to change as Google and other companies integrate AI into their own systems. | Read the report

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? Coffee break

An Israeli airstrike in Lebanon that killed three journalists and injured four others on 25 October was carried out using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a United States-produced guidance kit. According to a new investigation by Human Rights Watch, the attack was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime. The blast killed journalists Ghassan Najjar, Mohammad Reda and Wissam Kassem. | Read

The Google app for iOS is automatically converting some website text into links to Google Search results. The company has a form through which?web publishers can opt out of this new scheme. | Read

In the age of Tinder and Bumble, a small weekly in Vermont is one of the last bastions of newspaper personal ads. A lovely story by Adrienne Raphel that reads a bit like a Christmas short story. | Read

Jane Martinson reviews a new book by Australian journalist Eric Beecher on the role media media moguls have played in the demise of journalism in several English-speaking countries. “Beecher suggests that the owners should work together on ‘an enforceable code of ethical conduct’ in order to rebuild trust,” Martinson writes. | Read

?? One piece from our archive

?? The future of two Catholic newspapers. La Croix in France and Avvenire in Italy are the most successful newspapers in Europe’s Catholic media landscape, with over 80,000 paying subscribers. In a world where both news media and organised religion are losing influence, how are they dealing with these twin existential crises? Priscille Biehlmann spoke to two of their top editors to learn more about their challenges and their strategy for survival. | Read

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