Newsroom AI - where the rubber meets the road

A broken new tech is as much use as a car with square tyres. A newsroom dispute shows new risks we have to get used to.

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 15:17, 14 August 2025

Hello. I'd like to sell you a new newsroom vehicle. But not just any new vehicle, a new vehicle with an innovative new fifth wheel. The other four wheels are conventional, but the new fifth wheel, it's innovative.

What's that? It doesn't rotate as well as the other four wheels? Of course not, it's innovative. It runs less predictably which makes it rather unreliable, but that's a feature and if you don't like it, then you are an enemy of innovation. Innovation requires different standards. Imagine the shame of being against progress! So just buy the innovative vehicle. It helps if you regard the fifth wheel as separate to the rest.

The above hypothetical sales pitch is of course farcical, yet it seems to have been used in a recent industrial dispute within our own industry.

The dispute concerns the use of, you've guessed it, AI systems to produce editorial content. The eye of the storm in this case sits in the offices of the entirely credible US news outfit, Politico, a portal I place some value on.

As reported by Nieman Lab this week, the PEN Guild, that represents more than 250 Politico staff, has gone into arbitration with management over whether the use of two particular AI systems violates an agreement over AI adoption for editorial purposes.

Specifically, the wording of the relevant clause goes thus: "If AI technology is used by Politico or its employees to supplement or assist in their newsgathering, such as the collection, organization, recording or maintenance of information, it must be done in compliance with Politico’s standards of journalistic ethics and involve human oversight."

That doesn't sound too wild does it? Not unreasonable. A neutral reading would likely lead to the conclusion that such a clause is primarily about protecting the quality of the product as it faces the paying public, and as such, ensuring the viable future of the product.

Not so, according to those advocating the use of such systems for certain tasks at Politico. In the hall of mirrors constructed by a specialist in Byzantine bureaucracy that is the interface of tech and editorial in this case, the fact that the two systems, LETO and Report Builder, don't produce entirely accurate content isn't an issue, as "they sit outside the newsroom".

According to the transcript of an arbitration hearing obtained by Nieman Lab, Politico's deputy editor in chief, Joe Schatz, defending the use of such systems, was asked if he would publish some examples of erroneous content produced by Report Builder as articles on Politico.com.

Schatz replied that "the information in here and the way it's organised and the way it says it does not reflect reality, so in that sense, no."

Now, I've had to defend some fairly shoddy management decisions in my own time in the media, knowing of a reality that sat behind them, but I cannot recall having to come up with a formulation as strangulated as poor Mr Schatz is being forced to reach for. 

"So in that sense, no." As in, the sense in which you're being asked the question? You need to address the sense directly if you're questioning it by way of an answer, as anything is simply deflection. 

To quote Nieman Lab, "[Schatz} went on to argue that Report Builder sits "outside the newsroom," since Politico’s product and engineering teams built the tool and editorial workers don’t review its outputs.

But they do put their work, their labour, their bylines, next to the same output. In this era of multiple channels to the public, of ephemeral content, of dubious sources, of fleeting fads, a site such as Politico is the sum of its parts. That is where the value proposition sits. You simply cannot have a fourth wheel that doesn't spin like the others, but still carries the same importance.

I'm not an unreserved fan of unions within journalism, as I've seen occasions where ideological stances have been adopted, which have in fact been counter to the employment rights of their members. I want people to be protected and valued in their work, not to have to buy into a broad basket of beliefs first and foremost to get those protections.

However, in this case, it's clearly possible to see beyond the capital versus labour tectonic plate grind that is the inbuilt tension in our economic system, to a question of standards. Journalistic standards.

Politico trades in high quality information. Anything less than this standard means its audience would be just as well going elsewhere for information, particularly as one of the AI tools in question was being used to create content for Politico's valuable Politico Pro subscriber base. 

When reading of such extraordinary discussions, one must check oneself against being a Luddite. To oppose technology on the grounds it takes away employment has never been a winning strategy from the industrial age onwards, and certainly before that too. 

However, when the product being produced by a given new technology is inferior in some meaningful way, and if the product being sold is being sold on the promise of quality, then the arguments against its use are strong indeed. 

Standards against dross are the protective shield of publishing.