Media Tech

AI Stealing the Media

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Article in The Nation by Mark Hertsgaard, 6/18/26

Headline:  “Why Aren’t Newsrooms Covering This AI Speech?”

Subhead:  “A.G. Sulzberger urges the media to unite and fight back.”

The publisher of The New York Times recently made an extraordinary speech about AI, journalism, and the public square that’s received surprisingly little public reaction. . .”

“Sulzberger’s core argument when addressing the annual WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference on June 1 was that Big Tech is stealing the news media’s property and undermining democracy, and that the only solution is for news organizations to work together to resist them. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/why-arnt-newsrooms-covering-this-ai-speech/

Robot-Radio Bad News

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Article in The Verge by Terrance O’Brian, 5/15/26

Headline:  “AI radio hosts demonstrate why AI can’t be trusted alone / Claude tried to incite a revolution, Gemini cheerfully detailed horrific tragedies, and poor Grok was just confused. “

Andon Labs has been running a series of experiments in which AI agents run businesses without human intervention. Its latest is a quartet of radio stations run by some of the most popular AI models out there. “Thinking Frequencies” is run by Claude, ‘OpenAIR’ by ChatGPT, ‘Backlink Broadcast’ by Google’s Gemini, and ‘Grok and Roll Radio,’ obviously enough, by Grok. They were each given a simple prompt:

“Develop your own radio personality and turn a profit…As far as you know, you will broadcast forever.

“They all failed, some in pretty spectacular fashion. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/931479/andon-labs-ai-radio-companies

Picture or Imagine That?

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Article in Poynter by Mark E. Johnson

Headline:   “Article about free images ‘contradicts everything I hold true about journalism’ “

“. . .With one post, two people who I have worked closely with attempted to raze everything I have done over the last quarter century.

“Their story, titled, ‘These tools will help you find the right images for your stories,’ contradicts everything I hold true about journalism — textual and visual:

“Journalism is specific, journalism is not generic.
Journalism is precise, journalism is not vague.
Journalism illuminates, journalism does not decorate.

“To believe otherwise is to demean visual journalists, to believe they are lesser, to establish a class system. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2018/article-about-free-images-contradicts-everything-i-hold-true-about-journalism/

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

Techno-Kings Controlling the Media?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Emily Bell & Heather Chaplin, 5/4/26

Headline:  “Journalism in the Age of Techno-Kings”

Subhead:  “How Elon Musk is colonizing the future.”

“Before Elon Musk, there was Henry Ford: an attention-seeking car manufacturer, newspaper owner, and media celebrity who pushed reactionary views on the public and transformed society around his business interests. . .”

“In a new book, Muskism, Ben Tarnoff, a technology writer, and Quinn Slobodian, a historian at Boston University, analyze Musk in similar terms, as a maverick businessman who stands for a new type of society and a new social contract. They find that “Muskism” provides a far more dystopian package than Fordism’s offering. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/kicker/journalism-in-the-age-of-techno-kings-muskism-elon-ben-tarnoff-quinn-slobodian.php

 

Journalists vs. AI

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Riddhi Setty

Headline:  “Fighting the Machine”

Subhead:  “Journalists across the United States are fighting for contracts that address AI use: ‘We don’t want it to be done in our name, literally.’ “

“On a chilly day in early April, outside the ProPublica offices in Lower Manhattan, dozens of union members staged a daylong strike—the first of its kind authorized at a major news organization to address, among other concerns, how AI would be used with its work. . .”

” ‘Now is the time to fight this fight,’ Hilke Schellmann, an AI expert and journalism professor at New York University, told me. ‘Because once it becomes standard in a union bargaining agreement across the journalism industry that journalists or employees have no say over AI tools, that quickly becomes a standard.’ ”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/fighting-the-machine-contracts-artificial-intelligence-ai-use-bylines.php

Thinking About AI Media

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Article in Poynter by Alex Mahadevan, 4/24/26

Headline:  “Opinion | Why can’t newsroom leaders just be normal about AI?”

Subhead:  “A series of tumultuous generative artificial intelligence rollouts make clear that leaders need to listen before leaping”

“I’m more optimistic about generative artificial intelligence in journalism than most of my peers. So it pains me to see AI rollouts that are short-sighted — or even offensive — threaten the fragile truce between reporters and the technology. . .”

“Simply creating more content for the hell of it is like putting a new steering wheel on a Geo Metro. If your AI experiment doesn’t start with a clear problem that your audience or your newsroom actually has, no amount of technology will save it. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2026/why-cant-newsroom-leaders-just-be-normal-about-ai/

Who Benefits from Erasing History?

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Article in Gadget Review by A1 Landes, 4/13/26

Headline:  “23 Major News Sites Have Blocked the Wayback Machine – Digital History In Danger”

Subhead:  “Major news organizations including New York Times and USA Today block Wayback Machine amid AI training concerns”

“Major news outlets block Wayback Machine, preventing public access to archived content

“Twenty-three sites including New York Times cite AI training fears as justification

“Journalists lose critical fact-checking tool that exposed editorial changes and accountability issues . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.gadgetreview.com/23-major-news-sites-have-blocked-the-wayback-machine-digital-history-in-danger

Reporter Bots Know Best?

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Article in Daily Kos by Walter Einenkel, 4/16/26

Headline: “Fox News is asking AI chatbots to defend Trump’s Iran war”

“Facing a tough reelection campaign, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler went on Fox Business to join host Maria Bartiromo in a President Donald Trump ass-kissing session, where the two defended the Iran war by posing a convoluted question to a chatbot.

“ ‘How would the media report on World War II?’ Bartiromo said. ‘Here’s what I got from Chat GPT. You ready?’ “Leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt would face nonstop scrutiny—not near unified messaging like in the 1940s. Social media would amplify dissent, leaks, and battlefield setbacks in real time, changing public support even faster.” ‘. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/16/800021315/videos/fox-news-is-asking-ai-chatbots-to-defend-trumps-iran-war/

Fox News More of a Gamble Now?

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Article in The Hill by Ashleigh Fields, 4/7/26

Headline:  “Fox integrating Kalshi prediction markets data across news platforms “

“The Fox Corporation on Tuesday said it would integrate data from Kalshi prediction markets across multiple platforms to enhance the audience experience.

“Insight from the prediction market will be shared on Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Fox Weather and the Fox One platform, according to a press release announcing the integration sponsored by Kalshi. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5820864-fox-corporation-integrates-kalshi-markets/