AI Journalism

Stealing from Journalists OK?

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Article in The Intercept by Noah Horowitz, 9/2/26

Headline:   “Trump Admin Tells Court: Let OpenAI Rip Off The Intercept’s Articles”

Subhead:  “Trump’s Justice Department filed a brief on behalf of OpenAI in a landmark copyright lawsuit by The Intercept and other media companies.”

“President Donald Trump’s Justice Department took the side of tech giant OpenAI in its court battle with The Intercept and other media companies over the company’s use of others’ creative work to train its artificial intelligence tools.

“In a federal court filing in New York, the Justice Department argued that the U.S. has a vested interest in OpenAI having access to a vast array of intellectual property. The Trump administration warned that restricting OpenAI’s access to the data could hamper scientific progress and harm the country’s dominance in the race for artificial intelligence. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://theintercept.com/2026/09/02/trump-openai-copyright-lawsuit-news-articles/

AI as Media Tool

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jem Bartholomew, 8/27/26

Headline: “Should the Press ‘Run Toward’ AI?”

Subhead: “A new book argues that news organizations should enthusiastically adopt AI to improve their journalism. Critics aren’t so sure.”

“. . .Rosenstiel, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, argues that journalism is ‘failing democracy’ and should ‘become more focused on helping people live their lives than on merely getting their attention. . .”

“. . .instead of using datasets for one-off enterprise stories, journalists should work to combine multiple streams of information into a single, constantly updating hub—taking on the role of data wranglers, one might say—and then enable audiences to navigate that resource themselves, for instance with an AI chatbot. This, he argues, could help put newsrooms back at the center of their communities. The idea is about ‘extending the reach of human journalism using technology as a tool,’ he told me. ‘I’m not advocating having AI write stories.’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/should-the-press-run-toward-ai-tom-rosenstiel-new-book-next-journalism-how-press-must-change-serve-democracy.php

Wall Street Journal Gets Wet

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Article in Status by Brett LoGiurato, 8/28/26

Headline:  “The WSJ Crosses the A.I. Rubicon”

Subhead: “The Journal’s opinion editor defended the use of A.I. in a recent column, but some newsroom staffers, and the publication’s union, are raising concerns about the precedent, Status has learned.

“Inside The Wall Street Journal’s newsroom this week, reporters’ group chats have been buzzing a bit more than usual. . .”

“On Monday, billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller stunned much of Wall Street by offering a pointed critique of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in the hallowed pages of The Journal’s opinion section—only to later admit that he had used a large-language model to help draft the piece. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.status.news/p/wsj-ai-op-ed-stanley-druckenmiller

Should AI Pay Journalists?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Issie Lapowski, 8/13/26

Headline:  “Axios Wants to Save Local News with AI”

Subhead:  “At the end of the day, if someone’s going to pay you for content, you say: Well, how much are you going to pay me?” Jim VandeHei, the chief executive, said of his company’s deal with OpenAI. “If that payment feels like it’s a fair transaction price, you say yes.”

“. . .Every media company faces existential questions about the rise of AI, especially this one: How should newsrooms get paid for the information AI spits out and the models that were trained on journalists’ work? The New York Times has sought to answer this question in court. Some (including the Times) have struck licensing deals. . .”Axios Wants to Save Local News with AI

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/feature/axios-wants-to-save-local-news-with-ai-jim-vandehei-tech-newsletters.php

Press Sec. Leaves Final AI One for Media

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Article in AlterNet by Sarah K. Burris, 8/12/26

Headline: “Karoline Leavitt torn apart after her exit note is flagged for being AI:

“. . .Status News reporter Natalie Korach caught a brief note at the end of Leavitt’s post: ‘Interesting flag at the bottom of this post: “Made with AI.” ‘

“Latika M. Bourke, of the Australian daily digital newspaper ‘The Nightly,’ also spotted the note, highlighting it with the large eyes emoji.

“CBS News night assignment editor Ryan Sprouse also noticed the AI note.

” ‘Karoline Leavitt is leaving the White House to lie elsewhere,’ cracked Mrs. Betty Bowers. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.alternet.org/karoline-leavitt-ai-2677695246/

Robots Reading You the News?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jem Bartholomew 7/6/26

Headline:  “All the News While Doing the Dishes”

Subhead:  “News organizations have embraced AI narrators. But how does artificial mediation change our relationship to a piece of writing?”

On major news sites, you may have started noticing a button—maybe a triangular ‘play’ symbol, or a little headphones icon—allowing you to hear an article read aloud. Tap the button, and you may be told that the piece is being ‘read by an automated voice.’ News outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal . . . have all embraced automated text-to-speech tools to oralize their journalism in recent years. . .”

“Does hearing journalism narrated by a synthetic voice change a reader’s relationship to the story?. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/all-the-news-while-doing-the-dishes-ai-narration-artificial-mediation-relationship-writing-new-yorker-new-york-times-singer-remnick-elevenlabs-staniszewski.ph0p

Foreign Journalists Interrogated

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Article in Reuters by Simon Lewis, 8/6/26

Headline:  “US to vet social media of foreign journalists applying for visas, report says”

“The U.S. State Department will ​vet the social media accounts of foreign journalists applying for visas to work in the United ‌States, according to a media report on Thursday.

“The report in the conservative news outlet The Daily Signal cited an internal memo that said an initiative by President Donald Trump’s administration that requires applicants for many visa types to make their social media accounts public ​for screening was being expanded to include foreign media representatives. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-vet-social-media-foreign-journalists-applying-visas-report-says-2026-08-06/

News Orgs vs. AI

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Article in UPI by Stephen Feller, 7/9/26

Headline:  “News organizations call for legal sanctions against OpenAI”

“More than a dozen news organizations asked a court to sanction OpenAI for withholding evidence in lawsuits filed against the company for copyright infringement.

“The New York Times, New York Daily News, The Intercept and 14 other news organizations asked a federal court on Thursday for sanctions against the artificial intelligence company for lying about its ability to provide data showing how it has used copyrighted material to train its models.

The companies had sued OpenAI for violating copyright law by using their content to create a secondary product — its AI models — without paying for it, The New York Times and Variety reported. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/07/09/news-organizations-file-sanctions-openai-copyright-infringement/5221783621572/

When is “News” Not News?

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Article in the Washington Post by Kathleen Parker, 5/22/26

Headline:  “All this ‘talent’ breaks my brain — and my heart”

Subhead:  “AI fakery is overwhelming. What will happen to human imagination?”

“. . .This brings us to fake news — though not in the way President Donald Trump would have us think. A report from Vulture cites a former executive who estimates that more than 90 percent of what’s online is advertising ‘in disguise.’ At its peak, the content distributor Floodify ran 65,000 dummy social media accounts to gin up interest in its clients, said Joe Lim, who founded the company. This meant that on a given day, Floodify posted 50,000 ads across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X, which are all supposedly the output of everyday users. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/05/22/ai-is-creating-digital-world-fake-talent-fame/

 

Journalism in a Hall of Mirrors

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Article in The Guardian by Katherine Viner, 5/6/26

Headline: “How to survive the information crisis: ‘We once talked about fake news – now reality itself feels fake’ “

Subhead:  “In this age of crisis, technology is pulling us apart. At its best, journalism can bring us together again, writes Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner”

“. . .As tech companies have prioritised capturing attention, truth has been downgraded. AI slop and deepfakes are now so rampant that it feels that your brain can no longer compute what it’s seeing. You start to question things that turn out to be true. It doesn’t help that reality itself has become so much stranger and more grotesque. . .”

“. . .Before I talk about Guardian journalism, I’m going to talk about what makes that journalism possible. Now, I’ll admit that the words ‘ownership model’ might not set the pulse racing. But it really matters. At the Guardian, we have no proprietor demanding political or commercial returns. We have no profit-driven shareholders demanding cuts or cash. The purpose of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian, is to keep the Guardian going in perpetuity, serving the public interest, not the interests of the wealthy. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/ng-interactive/2026/may/06/how-to-survive-the-information-crisis-we-once-talked-about-fake-news-now-reality-itself-feels-fake