Does it matter that news reporting has lost its essential quality? With a few exceptions worldwide, journalism reporting is becoming a playfield of grandeur and superlatives, filling the eyes but not informing.
Stories that boastfully claim great discoveries, unearthed richness, or emphasize services or goals belong to the tabloid type of journalism. It is a sort of propaganda to push on issues and achievements. Those in the media are controlling what is published; subjectively, they are pushing for their preferences rather than informing the public. The question is, how much longer will it last?
Journalism is going through phases and has been reshaped by the rise of digital media and social networking. While the model of print and broadcast has been somewhat disrupted, new forms of journalism have emerged, including citizen journalism, data journalism, and ego media. The inability to pinpoint the source of opinions and information can often be obscured by social media personalities. Facts that shape politics, economics, and social development are being sidelined to give space to self-presentation. The person becomes more important than the information.
We, as consumers, are losing the ability to concentrate and to ask meaningful questions, while at the same time, we are increasing our expectations to be entertained, above all, by social media. According to the article Inception: Social Media’s Influence on Your Opinion published by Forbes recently, “social media are great at two things: when people are uncertain about a topic, social media can convincingly influence a particular position; but if a level of certainty exists, social media can provide all the affirmation needed to validate that belief – and it doesn’t matter the topic.”
Though social media has been shaping audience responses to journalism and news consumption mostly through algorithms to reach a wider audience – platforms already determine what we see - journalism continues to be rewritten, this time by artificial intelligence (AI). Bearing in mind that AI has been in use for some time already for translation and transcription of voice and text.
The excitement about AI possibilities in journalism is highly celebrated. Conferences and seminars are popping up everywhere. AI systems can generate articles, reports, and video content. They can also analyse news articles and social media posts and then provide reports. However, AI objectivity depends on the databases it has been trained on, which could have an impact on accuracy and credibility.
Additionally, AI can lead to false or misleading information being spread because it cannot critically evaluate the sources it uses. Bolsonaro and Trump are only two of the many examples of reliable and official sources spreading disinformation and fake news. As such, AI can reinforce the spread of misleading information. So, who is responsible if an AI program creates content that is inaccurate or misleading?
On the technical side, artificial intelligence platform companies provide infrastructure, services, and tools; therefore, it is difficult for news organsations to avoid them or even operate AI applications without relying on their hardware, software, data, and expertise. The news sector will be in the hands of platform businesses. Technology and news will become embedded in the hands of big tech
companies.
There is a genuine need for good journalism, and AI has the potential to deliver more personalized news and improve human talent. Journalism and media professionals need to be well-positioned to take advantage of the benefits that AI has to offer. But journalism is not the same as public relations. Their objectives are different, and so are the types of articles delivered. What is good for the eyes may not be good for the mind.
Well trained human journalists can be creative and produce in-depth analyses. AI, so far, is only capable of influencing types of stories originating from the readers’ relationships with search engines and social media.
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