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"Fake News" & Real Robots Pose The Latest Threats to Journalism

By Brian Donlon

These are trying times for journalism and journalists.

Between “fake news” and “alternative facts” and trying to develop editorial plans that reflect the news habits of 21st Century consumers, the state of journalism and journalists has never felt to be in more peril.

“Real” reporters before the dawn of “fake news” covering the Dan Rather vs then Vice President Bush clash with author Brian Donlon second from right.

Most journalists I know – even those of a more seasoned vintage – are hard pressed to remember a time where the leader of the nation and the free world singled out reporters, editors, producers and anchors as “enemies.” Now journalists are just as prone to navel gazing as the next guy who can indulge in excessive contemplation of ourselves and our self-interests. These declarations though have made us look not only inward but outward – on air, in print and online as exemplified here is a recent edition of Closing Bell.

Ir increased newwspaper subscriptions, raised television news ratings, lifted traffic on digital news sites. In general the public seems to be more involved and aware of issues – and that is a positive development.

Still, journalists and journalism remains under siege. Yes the economic model of news and been tossed on its ear and financial budgets are now just as important as news budgets. The encroachment of technology however is no longer just about digital media vs traditional media vs social media vs virtual reality vs whatever the next great buzz is. No, the threat is no longer about displacing or re-positioning content, the threat is to the human factor of news.

About 18 months ago, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic wrote a piece “The World Without Work” which should be mandatory reading for everyone, but especially those who reside in Washington D.C. In his piece Thompson detailed the technological changes past, present and what is coming in the future. He noted that with each technological transformation, new industries and services were created.

However, for the digital age Thompson warned that “throughout these reshufflings, the total number of jobs has always increased. What may be looming is something different: an era of technological unemployment, in which computer scientists and software engineers essentially invent us out of work, and the total number of jobs declines steadily and permanently.Thompson is not referring to coal miners and auto workers here. There is hardly a sector that will remain untouched – including journalists!

Read that again . . . “the total number of jobs declines steadily and permanently.” It is a subject that Closing Bell tackled recently -- and one that deserves more coverage.For more than two centuries the process of journalism has not dramatically changed. The delivery systems have certainly progressed. The Founding Fathers never could have envisioned the inky printed paper delivered to their doorsteps would be replaced by the immediacy of digital publishing on the Internet or non-stop news via something called cable.

Through the decades, no matter the technological shifts, the practices and procedures of news gathering have remained by and large intact. Even with all of today’s technology a reporter still researches, interviews and analyzes the facts (and non-facts). Then arranges words to create a compelling story. It is a process that when boiled down is truly awe inspiring. The late media theorist Neil Postman offered a unique insight on why the gathering of news and newspapers have survived. “Unlike television or the computer, language appears to be not an extension of our powers but simply a natural expression of who and what we are. This is the great secret of language. Because it comes from inside us, we believe it to be a direct, unedited, unbiased apolitical expression of how the world is.”

Those great powers Postman praised, that seem so essentially human, that seemingly made journalists special are now facing the robot age. The “great secret of language” that personal expression is being targeted by computer programmers and cost-cutting news managers. Consider:

More than 1,500 newspapers have access to corporate earnings business stories from the Associated Press which are now “written” by software programs.

Fox Sports auto-generates some sports recaps that appear on its Big Ten Network web site and presents game predictions under the banner of “Whatifsports,” a company Fox parent NewsCorp, acquired in 2005.

An algorithm is being utilized by the Los Angeles Times to offer stories about earthquakes in California.

A more sanguine chronicler of journalistic developments might shrug off these developments as rote content that features nothing but numbers, offers little writing or creativity and does not threaten the essence of reporting.

Maybe.

But take the case of the LA Times. The quake coverage/data collection proved so successful that it is now using another algorithm in its coverage in reporting homicides. The days of a “cub reporter” working his way up on the “police blotter” will soon be a reference in old black and white journalism movies like Humphrey Bogart’s great Deadline, USA.

Two companies -- Narrative Science and Automated Insights -- are leading the charge into newsrooms with these robotic journalists. Both provide names for their products that aim to kindle thoughts of newspaper luminaries such as newspaper publisher and founding father Alexander Hamilton and noted writing stylist E.B White, (and any self-respecting journalist still has a copy of his Elements of Style sitting on a desk).

Narrative Science’s non-human journalist is named “Quill” while Automated Insights’ competitor has the moniker “Wordsmith.” Neither company or robotic journalist seems content at stopping at offering game scores or financial reports.

Wordsmith is working with the National Football League -- America’s most popular sport – to offer coverage of games. Automated Insights plans is to place tiny sensors under players’ shoulder pads and these devices will allow for Wordsmith to receive instant data that can measure tackles, fumbles yardage etc., which in turn it could create live blogs and “first person” -- or is it “first robot”? -- reports from the field.

It’s not just reporters that are at risk. Robots are also infiltrating some of the tasks performed by editors. The work of an editor at most outlets has long been in the wise hands of a newspaper veteran known for superior editorial judgment. An editor is also the individual who bridges the gap between a reporter’s raw information and what the public finally sees. Despite experience and knowledge that can only come by daily “journalism” practiced day in and day out, these positions are being usurped by tech as well.

Social media platforms Twitter and Facebook are selecting stories for consumers with user “newsfeeds.” Who needs an editor to select and place the best stories when a “bot” can search Facebook and deliver what a user wants – even if what the reader receives is “fake” as we saw with Facebook during the 2016 election.

Not to be outdone by its social media rival, Twitter’s “Moments” tool is designed to aggregate information, images, and live video from its users to produce a steady flow of content around real-time events and news stories.”

These personal news bots and news feeds may allow consumers to “select” their news, but if a generation of digital newsreaders prefer information about the Kardashians over the facts behind Islamic Fundamentalism or write off presidential politics what kind of democracy does our future hold?

Years ago I had a discussion about what is news with the late great Reuven Frank. The two-time president of NBC News was pushing for harder news coverage of, well, just about everything. I argued that daily coverage of the inner working of Capitol Hill were not going to generate large viewership number and Reuven waved me off. “My boy, our job isn’t just to tell them what they want to know, our job is to tell them what they need to know – even if they don’t know it.”

It would be interesting to hear what Reuven would say about today’s journalistic processes. One can certainly argue that “feeds,” “bots” and algorithms are about personal preferences and hence about freedom. But to some extent they diminish journalism.

These seemingly rudimentary programs cannot rival shoe-leather investigative reporting that human journalists have excelled at for decades. The role of the watchdog on big business and the sentinel who keeps eye over the matters of government cannot be emulated by an artificial intelligence. Or can they?

David Caswell, a fellow at the Donald W Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri told The Guardian last year, “If no one had detected the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, and in the election, the committee to re-elect the president had used information they’d gleaned, an algorithm could look at the series of events and say ‘these people had secret knowledge somehow.”

Artificial intelligence beating Woodward and Bernstein to the story? No secret sources like “Deep Throat” who turned out to be FBI agent Mark Felt risking life and career to preserve democracy?

Sorry. I saw Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines. That version of the future where AI rules wasn’t very appealing. Nor did HAL seem to have a handle on reality in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Would HAL have the ability to not just absorb Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, but to maneuver the nuances of them such as being “vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable” and giving “voice to the voiceless” or “Boldly tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience,” ?

Before there was “fake news” and AI and the internet, Humphrey Bogart’s crusading newspaper editor in Deadline, USA dealt with different threats to journalism. Still, his warning in the 1954 film holds true today, “A free press, like a free life, sir, is always in danger.”

With all the marvels of technology, we sometimes forget that.

#journalism #donlon #fake news #robots