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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
How AI boosted profits at Daily Beast | Pink News ends ‘reporter-led’ newsroom
And publishers hit back at report claiming it is ‘open season’ on Muslims in press
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And according to chief operating officer Keith Bonnici, AI played a direct role in this.
He was speaking at the recent Media Strategy Network USA event in New York. Bonnici said a combination of efficiency savings and licensing payments have boosted profitability at The Daily Beast. And he also explained why AI won’t be replacing the core work done by journalists at the title.
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😟 There has been no mention of AI in relation to the latest cutbacks at Pink News.
But the question remains as to how it will cover the news of the day without its team of four reporters who have been placed at risk of redundancy.
Staff have been told the brand is moving away from a “reporter-led newsroom”.
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🤔 Can bias ever be eliminated from journalism and should we even want it to be?
Personally, I don’t think any form of press regulation in a democracy can outlaw bias because publications are allowed to have their own point of view.
But journalists and publishers should pay attention if an entire religious group says they are being unfairly portrayed.
Clickbait online headlines can play up to societal fears at the expense of straight reporting, especially when it comes to Islam.
But I have a couple of concerns about the research.
1. It has been produced by LLMs (with human spot checks). When I asked the CfMM to share a spreadsheet with links to the worst offending articles they couldn’t extract them from the AI black box, which raised alarm bells.
2. News is by its nature negative. I think a straight-up news report of a negative story involving a Muslim person could get described as biased in this research.
Spectator editor Michael Gove told Press Gazette the report is an attempt to “shut down open debate”. And GB News said the CfMM “relies upon its subjective interpretations of ‘bias’ to serve its own agenda”.