AI Doesn’t Even Have the Brainpower of a Lazy Journalist
By Dan Brown Journalists work hard. I know. I’ve had a long career as one. But in one recent instance, a newspaper reporter substituted artificial intelligence for basic journalism legwork, and did more damage than just disgracing himself. His error was so monumental, it affects all of us in the Fourth Estate. You may have heard about it. In May, the Chicago Sun-Times published a mea culpa after it published a list of 15 books to read this summer. This was part of its summer preview supplement. The problem: 10 of the books don’t exist. The writer who had been assigned the story, Marco Buscaglia, used a shortcut to generate the article. “Rather than a reported recommendation list, this one had been generated by an AI agent,” explained Melissa Bell, the head of the non-profit that owns the daily, in the apology to readers that followed. For some reason, neither Buscaglia nor the copy editors at the paper bothered to check the accuracy of the titles he was recommending. “The section was licensed from the third-party content provider King Features, a division of Hearst. The content wasn’t produced by Sun-Times journalists, nor was it reviewed by the newsroom prior to placement in the paper,” Bell added. Trust me when I say not one Chicago Sun-Times reader in 100 cares that the article wasn’t produced in-house. In my experience, the audience doesn't make a distinction between stories written by a newspaper’s own employees versus wire copy. So it is the Chicago Sun-Times that will take the full hit to its credibility. But it doesn’t stop there. This incident will tarnish all journalists. It gives more fodder to the media haters who want to discredit the work reporters, photographers, and editors do. Why is it in their interest to erode the image of journalists? So the public doesn’t listen to the media when it sounds the alarm. And there is an even more aggravating aspect to this incident. Do you know how much effort it would have taken that journo to generate a list of 15 books to read this summer? Not much. Trust me. If you’re not a journalist, let me break it down for you. You can trust me – I have made many such lists of events to attend, movies to watch, graphic novels to read, for publication in national, regional, city and campus papers. I hope my fellow journos don’t hate me for revealing these tricks of the trade, but in the grand scope of journalism this is not a tough assignment. First of all, any really good journalist is an avid reader. Given a reasonable bit of time, they would be able to generate 15 suggestions based just on the books they have recently read. Or you could consult publishers, who put out real books that deserve promoting. Or talk to a librarian or two. How about local book clubs? Or check the bestseller lists. Are you getting the picture? This is why this is more about journalistic laziness than technology. One writer decided it wasn’t worth even the minimal effort it would have taken to carry out his assignment. And now the rest of us have to pay the price. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
