Has Journalism turned the corner on the AI hype?

There were a lot of panels at this year’s International Journalism Festival about AI and technology, but the conversation seemed different. For the past few years in journalism, in think-pieces, panels, and hallway discussions, the chatter about AI has been largely, "look at what it can do, how quickly can we integrate it?"

Last week, in almost every case, the discussion was framed (as Alessando Alviani said) “What for Who for?” Meaning (in my words) we are starting to more appropriately treat the tech as just another tool, not a "bright shiny" novelty.

Or maybe that optimism is confirmation bias as the panel I was on focused specifically on that perspective. With Ben Werdmuller of ProPublica and Upasna Gautam of CNN we discussed the ethical risks of accidentally adopting the values and business models of Silicon Valley when we adopt its tech in our newsrooms. A video of the hour-long session is archived here:

• Developing a community-focused ethic of news technology

Ben and Upsana have both summarized their thoughts from the event, if you want to know more.

This question of ethics in journalism tech is one I have written and spoken about a lot in the past two years. The issue is less about technology and more about the power imbalance between journalism and Silicon Valley oligarchs. Journalism is aspirationally a public good and a sensemaker, producing knowledge and information for communities. That puts our mission in conflict with our business. We hope to do well (profit) by doing good (journalism). Silicon Valley lacks that tension. So when a newsroom uses tools developed by companies like Facebook or OpenAI that care only for profit, not the public good, we run the risk of imposing unintended harms, either on our profitability or our community.

It is an overstatement to say this conflict of values is necessarily the fault of Big Tech. Sure, they can be evil. But they are not journalists and have no specific duty to develop products and services that match our ethical standards. Journalism though, does have a responsibility to use technology ethically.

From my commentary in Digital Journalism last September:

It is self-evident that journalistic values should be embedded in the technologies used by news organizations. The contrary proposition: that technological solutions are entirely value-neutral or should be allowed to embed unassayed risk cannot be seriously considered. The question is the cost and benefits of avoiding or mitigating potential harms. In this effort, newsrooms are typically disadvantaged by a principal-agent problem: the asymmetric power and disinterested societal values of the digital platforms vs. a lack of organizational tech competency needed in counterpoint. As a result, Silicon Valley’s logics are smuggled into news organizations, often without alarm.

This concern for balancing the values of journalism against the more extractive practices of Big Tech was a theme that came up in several of the sessions I attended - not by coincidence, several of these consisted of News Product Alliance members.

• Shaping the future: product strategy for purposeful AI adoption in newsrooms
• 15 years of news product management: what worked, what didn’t?
• How to save journalism from big tech

Next up for me on this theme is a recently accepted session at SRCCON2025 in July: Systems of doubt : Ethics at the intersection of technology and journalism. See you there.