Impacting journalism

Traditionally, journalists are used to covering news events in the field, doing interviews, asking people their opinions and reporting accordingly. In some cases, to prevent misinterpretation, reporters need to transcribe the interview audio into text, and it takes them a lot of time and energy to finish the task.

Nowadays, with AI software, reporters find it is no longer necessary to type transcripts by themselves. It not only improves their work efficiency, and in many cases, also increases their accuracy because they have more time to double check for errors.

On the other hand, the emergence of ChatGPT and other AI software makes media realize that they don’t have to hire so many reporters anymore since AI software can “produce” news articles automatically, from weather forecast and commodity market conditions to planning for the coverage of elections.

With the oversight of the editorial team, the accuracy rate is as high as 99 percent and it helps to expand the coverage of more news events that were difficult to cover due to manpower constraints. As such, they can now provide broader news services to clients.

TV channels are using AI-generated presenters to read the news as well. While trust in the humans presenting the news has dropped to an all-time low, as a survey in January showed that only 42 percent of people in the United Kingdom trusted TV newsreaders, down 16 percentage points in a year. AI news anchors seem to provide an alternative because many people choose to get their news instead from individual creators or influencers now due to skepticism at presenters as independent arbiters of truth.

As far as news organizations are concerned, what they care about the most should be how they maintain the relationship with their readers and audiences through the establishment of credibility and create “newsworthy” content for their audience.

Living in the age of information overload, people are not sure whether the resources or the data being fed to them are trustworthy. News editors nowadays have to make decisions for their readers and audiences, and the role of “super gatekeepers” is invaluable for laymen and the public, alike, which relies on the editors’ training and expertise to determine the most useful and credible information to be delivered and published.