this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
27 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37742 readers
486 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because a significant chunk of what gets passed off as journalism on such sites is just writing copy -- for example, regurgitating press releases, or repackaging the work of another outlet that actually did do the legwork of investigative journalism. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with using AI tools to speed up the task of summarizing some other text for republishing, but I do question the value of such work in the first place.
It's going to be a long, long time until artificial intelligence can do the work of a true investigative journalist.
What outlets do tend to put out investigative journalism more often than writing copy? ~Strawberry
I don't know if there's many major outlets that are primarily investigative in the era of the 24/7 news cycle and the accompanying need to always have something fresh on the front page, but at least in the English-speaking world the various newspapers of record (think places like the New York Times or the The Guardian) still have a decent newsroom and publish original investigative pieces. In audio formats, NPR and the various constellations of associated organizations like the Center for Investigative Reporting do excellent work as well. There's also organizations like Bellingcat that specialize in deep-dive investigations using open-source intelligence, presented in a "just-the-facts" format without editorialization.
The Wikipedia article on news agencies is pretty good: "Although there are many news agencies around the world, three global news agencies, Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Associated Press (AP), and Reuters have offices in most countries of the world, cover all areas of media, and provide the majority of international news printed by the world's newspapers." Scroll down and you'll also find a list of some smaller news agencies, which tend to focus on local news.