How AI 'revolution' is shaking up journalism

PARIS, France — Journalists had fun last year asking the shiny new AI chatbot ChatGPT to write their columns, most concluding that the bot was not good enough to take their jobs. Yet.

But many commentators believe journalism is on the cusp of a revolution where mastery of algorithms and AI tools that generate content will be a key battleground.

The technology news site CNET perhaps heralded the way forward when it quietly deployed an AI program last year to write some of its listicles.

It was later forced to issue several corrections after another news site noticed that the bot had made mistakes, some of them serious.

But CNET's parent company later announced job cuts that included editorial staff -- though executives denied AI was behind the layoffs.

The German publishing behemoth Axel Springer, owner of Politico and German tabloid Bild among other titles, has been less coy.

"Artificial intelligence has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was –- or simply replace it," the group's boss Mathias Doepfner told staff last month.

Hailing bots like ChatGPT as a "revolution" for the industry, he announced a restructuring that would see "significant reductions" in production and proofreading.

Both companies are pushing AI as a tool to support journalists, and can point to recent developments in the industry.

'Glorified word processor' 

For the past decade, media organizations have been increasingly using automation for routine work like searching for patterns in economic data or reporting on company results.

Outlets with an online presence have obsessed over "search engine optimization", which involves using keywords in a headline to get favored by the Google or Facebook algorithms and get a story seen by the most eyeballs.

And some have developed their own algorithms to see which stories play best with their audiences and allow them to better target content and advertising -- the same tools that turned Google and Facebook into global juggernauts.

Alex Connock, author of "Media Management and Artificial Intelligence", says that mastery of these AI tools will help decide which media companies survive and which ones fail in the coming years.

And the use of content creation tools will see some people lose their jobs, he said, but not in the realms of analytical or high-end reporting.

"In the specific case of the more mechanistic end of journalism -- sports reports, financial results -- I do think that AI tools are replacing, and likely increasingly to replace, human delivery," he said.

Not all analysts agree on that point.

Mike Wooldridge of Oxford University reckons ChatGPT, for example, is more like a "glorified word processor" and journalists should not be worried.

"This technology will replace journalists in the same way that spreadsheets replaced mathematicians -- in other words, I don't think it will," he told a recent event held by the Science Media Centre.

He nonetheless suggested that mundane tasks could be replaced -- putting him on the same page as Connock.

'Test the robots' 

French journalists Jean Rognetta and Maurice de Rambuteau are digging further into the question of how ready AI is to take over from journalists.

They publish a newsletter called "Qant" written and illustrated using AI tools.

Last month, they showed off a 250-page report written by AI detailing the main trends of the CES technology show in Las Vegas.

Rognetta said they wanted to "test the robots, to push them to the limit".

They quickly found the limit.

The AI struggled to identify the main trends at CES and could not produce a summary worthy of a journalist. It also pilfered wholesale from Wikipedia.

The authors found that they needed to intervene constantly to keep the process on track, so while the programs helped save some time, they were not yet fit to replace real journalists.

Journalists are "afflicted with the syndrome of the great technological replacement, but I don't believe in it", Rognetta said.

"The robots alone are just not capable of producing articles. There is still a part of journalistic work that cannot be delegated."

Agence France-Presse

Maria Ressa is second Filipino named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

Rappler CEO Maria Ressa is the second Filipino to be part of the prestigious “Person of the Year” roster of Time magazine after late President Cory Aquino in 1986.

Ressa, who is facing several tax evasion charges, joins the late Jamal Khashoggi, detained Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe and the Capital Gazette, a small newspaper, in Time’s list of “The Guardians.”

The group of journalists appear in four variant covers of the magazine.

Her inclusion came days after she posted bail of P204,000 for four of the five tax cases the government filed against her in 2018.

Filipino women named as “Person of the Year”

Time described Ressa and Rappler, the news website she helped establish in 2012, as fearless in their reporting of President Rodrigo Duterte’s propaganda machine on social media.

“While the Philippine government denies a political motivation for the charges against Ressa and Rappler, the news site she founded in 2012, international observers regard them as the latest salvo in President Rodrigo Duterte’s bid to muzzle critical press and silence criticism of his administration’s deadly war on drugs,” said Joseph Hincks.

Ressa told Time that being a journalist during Duterte’s presidency is more difficult than her work as a war zone correspondent before.

“I’ve been a war zone correspondent. I’ve planned coverage when one side is shooting against the other side. That is easy compared to what we’re dealing with now,” she said.

Her supporters use the hashtag #Holdtheline as they lauded her for the recognition.

This was her statement on the possibility of getting arrested upon her arrival in Manila on December 2. She went to the United States to receive the international Press Freedom Award given to her by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The veteran reporter had been indicted over three counts of violating Section 255 of the Tax Code for failing to provide the correct information on her Income Tax Return for 2015, Value Added Tax returns for the third and fourth quarters of that year.

Corazon Aquino

Back in 1986, Aquino, the wife of late Senator Ninoy Aquino, held many “first’s.” She was hailed as the first female president of the country and the first Filipino to be the Woman of the Year.

“Whatever else happens in her rule, Aquino has already given her country a bright, and inviolate, memory. More important, she has also resuscitated its sense of identity and pride,” said Time.

Aquino that time said that being given with such recognition is an achievement of the Filipino people.

“I don’t want to say that this is my achievement. It is the Filipino people together who were able to believe in themselves because of what they were able to do in the election and then in the revolution. Because of this belief in each other they were now also able to look up to their leaders and follow their leaders,” she said.

She succeeded late Dictator Ferdinand Marcos as the leader of the country after he and his family were exiled to Hawaii,

Her son Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III became president in 2016.

The Guardians and the War on Truth

Edward Felsenthal, Time’s editor-in-chief, explained that his team decided to feature journalists this year because of their bravery in surpassing risks just to tell impactful stories.

“This year we are recognizing four journalists and one news organization who have paid a terrible price to seize the challenge of this moment: Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, and the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Md.,” Felsenthal’s  statement read.

“They are representatives of a broader fight by countless others around the world—as of Dec. 10, at least 52 journalists have been murdered in 2018—who risk all to tell the story of our time,” he added.

Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist who was a known critic of the Saudi government, was murdered after entering his country’s Istanbul consulate for divorce documents.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, Reuters journalists from Bangladesh, were detained in their home country for documenting the deaths of 10 Rohingya Muslims.

Five members of the Capital Gazette or the Capital, the local paper in the city of Annapolis in the state of Maryland, were gunned down inside their newsroom last June 28.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook's Zuckerberg discloses steps to fight fake news

Facebook Inc, facing withering criticism for failing to stem a flood of phony news articles in the run-up to the US presidential election, is taking a series of steps to weed out hoaxes and other types of false information, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post Friday evening.

Facebook has long insisted that it is a technology company and not a publisher, and rejects the idea that it should be held responsible for the content that its users circulate on the platform. Just after the election, Zuckerberg said the notion that fake or misleading news on Facebook had helped swing the election to Donald Trump was a "crazy idea."

Zuckerberg then said last Saturday that more than 99 percent of what people see on Facebook is authentic, calling "only a very small amount" fake news and hoaxes.

But in his Friday posting Zuckerberg struck a decidedly different tone. He said Facebook has been working on the issue of misinformation for a long time, calling the problem complex both technically and philosophically.

"While the percentage of misinformation is relatively small, we have much more work ahead on our roadmap," Zuckerberg said.

He outlined a series of steps that were already underway, including greater use of automation to "detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves."

He also said Facebook would make it easier to report false content, work with third-party verification organizations and journalists on fact-checking efforts, and explore posting warning labels on content that has been flagged as false. The company will also try to prevent fake-news providers from making money through its advertising system, as it had previously announced.

Zuckerberg said Facebook must be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or mistakenly restricting accurate content. "We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties," he said.

Facebook historically has relied on users to report links as false and share links to myth-busting sites, including Snopes, to determine if it can confidently classify stories as misinformation, Zuckerberg said. The service has extensive "community standards" on what kinds of content are acceptable.

Facebook faced international outcry earlier this year after it removed an iconic Vietnam War photo due to nudity, a decision that was later reversed. The thorniest content issues are decided by a group of top executives at Facebook, and there have been extensive internal conversations at the company in recent months over content controversies, people familiar with the discussions say.

Among the fake news reports that circulated ahead of the US election were reports erroneously alleging Pope Francis had endorsed Trump and that a federal agent who had been investigating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was found dead.

source: interaksyon.com

'Human powder keg' in US journalists' killings haunted by racism, revenge

WASHINGTON -- Vester Flanagan, who killed two journalists Wednesday and appeared to have filmed the murders, drew a troubled portrait of himself in tweets after their deaths and a rambling 23-page manifesto sent to ABC news.

Also known on-air as Bryce Williams, the 41-year-old African American said he was seeking to avenge racial injustices and instances in which he believed himself to have been wronged, in documents that paint him as deeply troubled by racism and hungry for revenge.

Flanagan allegedly shot and killed at close range reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, in the middle of a live interview early Wednesday.

The pair worked for Roanoke, Virginia CBS affiliate WDBJ where Flanagan was once employed -- and fired.

Flanagan fled the scene near a local lake, and his car was later found run off the highway, apparently after he shot himself. He died at a hospital in northern Virginia outside Washington.

In a series of tweets, Flanagan offered a glimpse at his motivations, posting that "Alison made racist comments" and claiming that Ward had reported him to human resources.

Yet in a rambling manifesto received by ABC News, Flanagan said a recent deadly church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine black parishioners died, was what drove him over the edge.

"The church shooting was the tipping point ... but my anger has been building steadily," he said.

"Why did I do it? I put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15. The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15 ..."

'Difficult to work with' 

Born in 1973, the San Francisco State University graduate and Oakland native said he had suffered throughout his career as a black, gay man.

In the manifesto, which Flanagan termed a "Suicide Note for Friends and Family," he complained of racial discrimination and bullying "for being a gay, black man."

Flanagan said in a tweet that he had filed a complaint against WDBJ's Parker, whom he shot.

"Vester was an unhappy man. We employed him as a reporter and he had some talent in that respect and some experience," WDBJ's general manager Jeffrey Marks said.

Flanagan joined the station in March 2012 and was dismissed in February 2013, escorted out the door by police.

"He quickly gathered a reputation of someone who was difficult to work with. He was sort of looking out for people to say things he could take offense to," Marks said.

"Eventually, after many incidents of his anger, we dismissed him. He did not take that well," he added.

Flanagan bounced in an out of jobs in journalism and other fields. Before being hired at WDBJ, he had spent eight years working outside of journalism.

From 1993 to 2005, he worked at KPIX, San Francisco's local CBS affiliate.

On his LinkedIn profile -- registered under the name Bryce Williams -- Flanagan wrote that he had worked at several television stations across the country since the mid-1990s as well as in marketing and customer relations.

'A human powder keg'

Co-workers at NBC affiliate WTWC in Tallahassee, Florida began noticing Flanagan's strange behavior when he worked there around 2000.

"He was a good on-air performer, a pretty good reporter. And then things started getting a little strange," journalist Don Shafer told a San Diego news station where he is now news director.

Flanagan took WTWC to court for discrimination, claiming to have been called a monkey.

In his manifesto, Flanagan said that his anger had been a long time coming.

"My anger has been building steadily ... I've been a human powder keg for a while ... just waiting to go BOOM!!!!"

source: interaksyon.com

Online news attracts star power and big money

WASHINGTON — The news media is generating some big news of its own, as a growing number of star US journalists move online, bringing followers and financial backers with them.

Online news sites have been around for years, but in recent months the trend has gained momentum, defying predictions of a troubled media industry.

The latest was the relaunch of FiveThirtyEight, headed by Nate Silver, a statistician and journalist who made his own headlines with his accurate prediction of the 2012 presidential election.




The site, which covers a range of news with a statistician’s eye, is backed by the sports broadcaster ESPN, after Silver left The New York Times with his blog.

Also joining the fray was The Intercept, a news site backed by tech entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar with an editorial team led by Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian reporter who broke news with documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Omidyar has pledged to invest $250 million in his First Look Media, which includes a not-for-profit news operation and a separate technology arm for new media.

The Washington Post’s popular “Wonkblog” columnist Ezra Klein meanwhile left the newspaper to start a news website backed by Vox Media.

Yahoo wooed television news star Katie Couric and former New York Times tech writer David Pogue. And journalists at The Wall Street Journal-backed tech blog AllThingsD broke off in January to create Re/code, a separate website with support from Comcast’s NBCUniversal.

The new energy in Internet news comes as the entrenched news industry faces deepening financial woes, and the model for online profits remains unclear.

Dying or reviving?

So is the news business dying or being reborn?

Alan Mutter, a former Chicago newspaper editor who consults for journalism and technology ventures, said that while traditional newspapers are withering, online news sites may be working.

But the digital news business is likely to be “vertical,” covering a segment such as technology, sports or politics, unlike a newspaper, which aims to cover all sectors. Online news can get money from subscriptions, premium content or links to shopping, for example.

“The future of digital publishing is the antithesis of traditional publishing,” Mutter told AFP.

Newspapers try to get a broad audience by offering comics, coupons and recipes, while covering news ranging from local crime to politics to walks on the moon, and online sites are changing that model.

The shift is similar to what happened in retailing, with multi-sector department stores hammered by specialty apparel, housewares or electronics stores.

“Newspapers are basically following a publishing-model mindset that is locked in 1958,” Mutter said.

“They take the same content and put it on a website or put it on mobile and they say they have a digital strategy.”

Low cost of entry

Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell who writes the Newsonomics blog, said it has become easier to launch news sites.

“The technology has gotten much better and cheaper in the past few years,” Doctor said.

“And once you create the content, the social world is able to find new audiences at practically no incremental cost.”

News startups can expand internationally and gain a far larger audience than they would with a local or even national US newspaper, he noted.

“You can ramp up one of these businesses and create a national or international brand for $5 million to $10 million,” Doctor said.

Without the legacy costs of newspapers like printing, distribution and longstanding pensions, websites can become profitable relatively quickly.

While not all ventures will succeed, they are attracting venture capital because “you could double or triple your money if you pick a winner,” Doctor said.

The startups are often personality driven — Klein has 441,000 Twitter followers and Silver 680,000. Former Daily Beast journalist Andrew Sullivan got 35,000 paid subscribers for his “The Dish” blog.

‘Golden age of journalism’? 


One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, Marc Andreessen, sees huge potential.

“I am more bullish about the future of the news industry over the next 20 years than almost anyone I know,” said a blog post by Andreessen, who founded the early Internet group Netscape Communications.

“Maybe we are entering into a new golden age of journalism, and we just haven’t recognized it yet.”

Andreessen said the news business is breaking free of the “monopolies and oligopolies” that controled it for much of the post-World War II era and that the Internet is allowing new businesses to get to a scale where they can support high-quality journalism.

“On the Internet, there is no limitation to the number of outlets or voices in the news chorus,” he said.

The economics of online news has allowed some sites to move beyond the practice of “aggregation,” and into more in-depth reporting traditionally seen as the domain for newspapers.

But analysts point out that while Internet news outlets which can gain readers nationally and internationally can thrive, the same is not true for local news organizations, which many Americans rely on for coverage of their communities.

“It’s a tale of two worlds,” Doctor said. “Local newspapers are still in a death spiral, with layoff after layoff.”

source: interaksyon.com

Journalists join fray with e-petition against Cybercrime Law

In a case of the medium being the message, more than 200 journalists and media groups on Wednesday submitted an electronic petition (e-petition) to the Supreme Court, asking it to nullify the controversial Cybercrime Prevention Act.

The e-petition, the first ever of its kind, was filled by members of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, the Philippine Press Institute and the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

"While many individuals and groups have already submitted petitions asking the High Court to nullify parts of it or junk it altogether, we believe it is necessary for the SC to hear as many voices as possible, including that of the media community, which uses the Internet as a news platform, relies heavily on electronic communication and whose members are very active in the social media," said NUJP secretary general Rowena Paraan in a letter.

Though the petitioners went through the usual process of submitting hard copies of the petitions to the Supreme Court, they also circulated the e-petition online and invited interested signatories to participate by clicking on a link and filling out an online form.

"This petition is filed, partly as an electronic document, because some of the petitioners are based outside of Metro Manila, with others based outside the Philippines," the petitioners said.

The petitioners included 20 media organizations and 250 journalists and media practitioners.

Signatories to the petition included journalists from GMA News, GMA News Online, ABS-CBN/ABS-CBNNews.com, Rappler.com, Mindanews, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Interaksyon.com, SunStar, Daily Tribune, Malaya/Business Insight, VERA Files, Far Eastern Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Center for Community Journalism and Development, Peace and Conflict Journalism Network Philippines, Philippine Center for Photojournalism, among others.

Named respondents in the petition were the executive secretary and the respective secretaries of the Departments of Justice, Interior and Local Government, and Budget and Management; as well as the respective heads of the Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation.

The Cybercrime Prevention Act came into effect on Wednesday.

The petition

In their 27-page petition, the journalists wanted the High Court to declare as unconstitutional, if not the law in its entirety, at least the following sections of the Cybercrime act:

- Sec. 4(c)(4) (Libel); Sec. 5(a) (Aiding or Abetting in the Commission of Cybercrime); Sec. 6 (inclusion of all felonies and crimes within coverage of the law), which the petitioners said violates the freedom of expression.

- Sec. 7 (Liability under Other Laws), which they said violates a person's constitutional guarantee of protection against double jeopardy.

- Sec. 12 (Real-Time Collection of Traffic Data), which violates a person's right to privacy of communication and correspondence.

- Secs. 14 (Disclosure of Computer Data) and 15 (Search, Seizure and Examination of Computer Data), 19 (Restricting or Blocking Access to Computer Data), and 20 (Non-Compliance), which is allegedly in violation of the separation of powers "as judicial powers are unduly delegated to the secretary of Justice, PNP, and the NBI."

- Sec. 24 (Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center) and 26(a)(Powers and Functions), which give the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center the power to formulate a national cybersecurity plan. 

The petitioner argued this power should properly fall within the authority of Congress and not an administrative agency.

They also said the specific provisions "unlawfully delegate" to police officers the authority to issue orders that should only be "within the scope and sphere of judicial powers and where non-compliance is penalized as a crime."

The petitioners wanted the court not only to prohibit the respondents from implementing the law, but also to prohibit them from formulating the accompanying Implementing Rules and Regulations.

The petitioners said giving the Department of Justice and Department of Interior and Local Government the authority to promulgate the implementing rules and regulation (IRR) would be an "unlwaful delegation of legislative powers and result in arbitrariness."

"The petitioners stand to suffer grave and irreparable injury with no speedy or adequate remedy at law," they said.

They also said the implementation should be stopped because public funds to be appropriated under the law could be wasted in case the law is eventually annulled. — DVM, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

800 chefs, food experts vote for 50 world's best restaurants

More than 800 chefs, restaurateurs, journalists and food experts voted Danish restaurant Noma as the world's best restaurant for the third year in a row, beating top eateries in Spain, Brazil, Italy, Britain, the United States and elsewhere.

According to a report of Reuters, the annual list of S. Pellegrino and Acqua Panna World's 50 Best Restaurants, produced by Britain's Restaurant Magazine, were unveiled in London.

Reuters said a panel rated chef Rene Redzepi's Noma as the "standard-bearer for the new Nordic movement.

The following restaurants made it to the top 10 of the world's 50 best restaurants:

1. Noma (Copenhagen)
DENMARK (home to 9,401 Filipinos)*

2. El Celler de Can Roca (Girona)
SPAIN (home to 52,611 Filipinos)*

3. Mugaritz (San Sebastian)
SPAIN

4. D.O.M. (Sao Paulo)
BRAZIL (home to 679 Filipinos)*

5. Osteria Francescana (Modena)
ITALY (home to 123,379 Filipinos)*

6. Per Se (New York)
UNITED STATES (home to 3,166,529)*

7. Alinea (Chicago)
UNITED STATES

8. Arzak (San Sebastian)
SPAIN

9. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (London)
UNITED KINGDOM (home to 196,740 Filipinos)

10. Eleven Madison Park (New York)
UNITED STATES


* Based on the 2010 Stock Estimates of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas

According to the 50 Best Restaurants website, the list is "created from The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, an influential group of over 800 international leaders in the restaurant industry, each selected for their expert opinion of the international restaurant scene."

"The Academy comprises 27 separate regions around the world. Each region has its own panel of 31 members including a chairperson to head it up. The panel is made up of food critics, chefs, restaurateurs and highly regarded ‘gastronomes’ each of whom has seven votes," it said.

"Of the seven votes, at least three of which must be used to recognize restaurants outside of their region. At least 10 panelists from each region change each year," it added.

Nationally, Spain and the United States tied with three restaurants each in the top 10, though Spain's El Celler de Can Roca in Girona came second and Mugaritz in San Sebastian placed third. In all, the United States had eight eateries in the top 50 and Spainhad five.

The Chefs' Choice award, voted for by the World's 50 Best chefs, was presented to Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz, which was devastated by a fire two years ago. Spanish winners also included Arzak at no. 8, whose joint Head Chef Elena Arzak was awarded the Veuve Clicquot World's Best Female Chef award.

Eight US restaurants made the top 50 list this year, the highest of which was New Yorkbased Per Se, owned by chef Thomas Keller, who was rewarded the Best Restaurant in North America and the S.Pellegrino Lifetime Achievement accolade after spending each of the past 10 years of the awards on the list under one guise or another.

Noma makes systematic use of beers and ales, fruit juices and fruit-based vinegars for its sauces and soups rather than wine, and allows vegetables, herbs, spices and wild plants in season to play a prominent role in its cooking.

"We feel that the cooking at Noma is fairly ambitious but then again, Nordic cuisine must possess a certain purity," Noma says on its website.

Noma's chef Redzepi serves a new kind of Nordic cuisine such as musk ox and smoked marrow, sea urchin and dill or beef cheek and pear.

The 34-year-old chef is an ambassador for the New Nordic Food programme set up by theNordic Council of Ministers and has headed the restaurant since its 2003 opening.

The Noma approach to cooking is concentrated on obtaining the best raw materials from the Nordic region such as Icelandic skyr curd, halibut, Greenland musk ox and berries.

"Noma is not about olive oil, foie gras, sun-dried tomatoes and black olives. On the contrary, we've been busy exploring the Nordic regions discovering outstanding foods and bringing them back to Denmark," Noma said on its website.

"This goes for very costly ingredients but also for more disregarded, modest ingredients such as grains and pulses, which you'll taste here in new and unexpected contexts," it said.

The two Michelin star restaurant does its own smoking, salting, pickling, drying, grilling and baking, prepares its own vinegars and concocts its own distilled spirits such as its own eaux de vies.
- with a report from Reuters, VVP, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com