Changing the narrative: A ChatGPT-powered tool ensures reporting is more inclusive and bias-free

Posted

Tracie Powell founded The Pivot Fund in 2021 to invest in “trusted, culturally competent news outlets” with funding, capacity building, training, consulting and networking. A mere year later, The Pivot Fund granted a total of $2 million. It also provided consulting services to seven local newsrooms in Georgia — all owned and managed by people of color — which reach Black, Hispanic and Asian-American audiences throughout the state.

From her vantage point as the founder and CEO of the Pivot Fund, Powell also saw an opportunity to impact newsrooms in another way — with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Last autumn, she debuted the Style Guide for Covering Communities of Color, an AI tool powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

She’d attended a pre-conference session at a 2024 Online News Association’s (ONA) event, where she listened to the publisher of The Haitian Times, Vanya André, talk about the style guide her publication created in ChatGPT and uses in conjunction with the AP Stylebook. The tool ensured that offensive language, biases and stereotypes are detected and expunged from reporting. One of the examples the publisher offered is the word “Vodou,” a religion practiced among Haitian immigrant communities. Spelling it “voodoo” is offensive to the Haitian community, as are Hollywood-perpetuated misconceptions, such as sensationalized portrayals of Vodou as malevolent or superstitious.

The Style Guide for Covering Communities of Color is an AI tool powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

“I thought this was something every single newsroom needs. So, I tinkered. I started writing prompts, testing prompts [in ChatGPT],” Powell said. She gathered and uploaded existing style guides from several associations — the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, South Asian Journalists Association, Disabled Journalists Association, Indigenous Journalists Association and others.

“I want to honor and acknowledge that the underlying work is not from the Pivot Fund. The underlying work belongs to these affinity groups. … I just used ChatGPT to synthesize it and merge these different style guides together into the mother of all style guides,” she said.

The Style Guide has a simple, familiar chatbot interface.

"You can upload your story, and the style guide will scan the story for any instances of implicit bias or a stereotype in your coverage, and then it will call it out for you," she explained. "It will tell you, here is where [the problem is], and then it also gives you suggestions on how to cover that community differently and make the story more inclusive. You can ask the tool questions about best practices for covering a specific immigrant or indigenous community.”

Journalists can input their content and have the Style Guide for Covering Communities of Color analyze it for potentially offensive or disrespectful words, phrases, stereotypes or biases. They can also query the guide with questions about thoughtfully, carefully and inclusively writing about communities of color.

“I want people to challenge the tool. The more you use it, the better it gets. It will help to improve our writing and allow us to humanize people,” Powell said. The free tool is found at https://chatgpt.com/g/g-jCSIUkRNi-style-guide-for-covering-communities-of-color.

The Pivot Fund welcomes feedback about the tool at styleguide@pivotfund.org.

Powell hopes it will be embraced by Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) publishers, nonprofits and legacy newsrooms alike.

“I got my start in newspapers. I’m a newspaper journalist. I’ve worked on both sides of the aisle at newspapers — both on the management side, the business side and in the newsroom — and so my heart is there,” she said. “I want them to become more relevant to their communities. I want their content to be more accessible to community members, whether African American and Hispanic Americans, Indigenous Americans or Muslim Americans. I want that content to be more accessible, reflective and representative of this country. … I want them to embrace this tool because I want them to do and be better.”

Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She's reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here