Recently, a friend of mine lost his job at a small town newspaper after 28-and-a-half years of working for this organization. His ‘firing’ is a symptomatic of an even greater problem as technology, used simply for monetary gain, begins to replace human-skill in the newsroom.
Many of the US’s ‘leading’ newsrooms are now using artificial intelligence to ‘produce’ data-heavy stories. The Associated Press, which is often used as a resource by smaller organizations to develop their own news articles, began using ‘language generation’ software to produce both sports and earning reports in 2014.
The Wall Street Journal uses AI technology to help identify ‘fake news’ stories. Many of these same stories are also written by that same AI technology which eventually flags these ‘fake news’ articles, canceling each other out.
Finally, in 2016, the Washington Post used a ‘robot reporter’ to cover not only the Rio Olympics, but also the US presidential campaign. And that’s the danger – one mistake not caught before filing and every news agency using that source becomes questionable.
On June 22, 2017, the Los Angeles Times, reported hat a 6.8 magnitude earthquake had hit the Pacific Ocean about ten miles from Santa Barbara. The computer found the data, dating back to 1925, and ran with it as if it had happened that day.
No wonder, the media suffers from serious trust-issues and again, they’ve done it to themselves with their so-called saving money measures.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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