Although whistleblowers are rare, they are powerful sources for uncovering corruption in businesses and government. Their impact is widely felt, from Deep Throat providing clues about the Watergate scandal to former employees of the tech startup Theranos revealing that the company was putting its customers’ health at risk. But what are the ground rules for journalists when interviewing whistleblowers?
Category Archive: News and Analysis
Polls got a bad rap after the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections because they were so far off the actual results. So what happened? And which polls should we look at for this election?
Meet yet another AI chatbot called Grok. Grok is Elon Musk’s version of ChatGPT with one big difference: access to real-time information on the social media platform X. This means Grok can respond to prompts about current events or viral posts.
Here’s another unique feature: Grok answers questions with “a bit of wit and a rebellious streak” according to the X AI team. It can also respond to “spicy questions” other AI bots reject.
It is high season for election interference, with multiple foreign actors trying to influence American voters with all kinds of misleading content. While this kind of disinformation is not a new phenomenon, intelligence experts say it is an “unprecedented threat in 2024 and that the US is less ready than ever,” according to NBC News.
If you ask Tucker Carlson, we know what he would say. In fact, he already said it.
Did you witness the earth-shattering news live? NFL football star Travis Kelce, fresh off a Super Bowl victory with the Kansas City Chiefs, had just taken a private jet to Sydney, Australia to see his girlfriend Taylor Swift. She was on a concert tour stop there. And OMG, you’d never guess what happened next.
Sora is the latest AI-powered tool from OpenAI, so new that it’s only available to a few select researchers, academics and visual artists. This software generates highly realistic videos from short snippets of text, like “historical footage of California in the gold rush.” After typing in that description, presto! Sora generates a high-resolution video in a fraction of the time it would take a digital artist to create it and way faster than actually filming that scene on-site with actors, props, lighting and cameras.
Anything that persuades news consumers to pause before sharing is a good start and helps keep misinformation from polluting our information ecosystem.
The jury is still out on this question in the long term, but for now, most experts say chatbots will contribute to the spread of misinformation. Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT what it knew about me—and its response was startling.
Reporting often involves the presentation of conflicting information from different sources. When this happens, reporters must be diligent in verifying the facts and seeking multiple perspectives. Ultimately, the goal is to provide the context, evidence, and analysis needed for the audience to make an informed judgment. And in moments when information is hard to assess accurately, it is critical for reporters to explain to their readers why they couldn’t obtain that information.
