A panel of four representatives from news publishing and journalism sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, providing testimony about the opportunities and concerns surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). The hearing was convened by U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Josh Hawley (R-Missouri).
During opening remarks, Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, spoke about the association’s more than 2,200 members. “[They] produce quality journalistic and creative content that seeks to inform, educate and connect with readers — and enrich their daily lives. We cover natural disasters, conflict zones, school boards, city halls, town halls, entertainment in the arts and matters of public interest,” she said.
“Our publications adhere to principles and processes that support verification, accuracy and fidelity to facts,” she continued. “We abide by standards and codes of conduct and provide readers a voice through correction policies to ensure accuracy and reporting. Unfortunately, that same accountability is not seen across the rest of the internet. Without proper safeguards, we cannot rely on a common set of facts that promote healthy public discourse. Without quality reporting, we cannot have an informed electorate and functional society.”
AI complicates matters further for news media publishers.
Coffey explained, “In addition to massive amounts of content used in training AI output, results to users' inquiries often contain summaries, excerpts and even full verbatim copies of articles written and fact-checked by human journalists. These outputs compete in the same market, with the same audience, serving the same purpose as the original articles that feed the algorithms in the first place. Because these uses go far beyond the guardrail set by the courts, this is not considered fair use under current copyright law. To be clear, news publishers are not opposed to AI. We want to help developers realize their potential in a responsible way.”
President and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters Curtis LeGeyt spoke to the Committee on behalf of radio and TV members, explaining how AI can be a valuable tool for them. But without regulation, it can potentially destabilize American’s ability to trust any information.
“The use of AI to doctor, manipulate or misappropriate the likeness of trusted radio or television personalities risks spreading misinformation, or even perpetuating fraud,” he explained.
“The rising prevalence of deep fakes makes it increasingly burdensome for both our newsrooms and users to identify and distinguish legitimate copyrighted broadcast content from the unvetted and potentially inaccurate content being generated by AI,” LeGeyt added. “To give a recent illustration: Following the recent October 7th terrorist attacks on Israel, fake photos and videos reached an unprecedented level on social media in a matter of minutes. Of the thousands of videos that one broadcast network sifted through to report on the attacks, only 10% of them are authentic and usable.”
Jeff Jarvis, former journalist, author and the Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism/director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY's Newmark School of Journalism, often opposes government intervention in the news business.
“I’ve been a journalist for 50 years and a journalism professor for the last 18 of those. I’d like to begin with three lessons about the history of news and copyright that I’ve learned from researching my book, ‘The Guttenberg Parenthesis.’ First, America’s 1790 Copyright Act protected only maps, charts and books. Newspapers were not covered by the statute until 1909. Second, the Post Office Act of 1792 allowed newspapers to exchange copies for free, enabling a so-called 'scissors editor' — an actual job title — to reprint articles, thus creating a network for news and, with it, a nation. To this day, journalists read, learn from and repurpose facts from each other. The question for us today is whether the machine has similar rights to read and learn.”
Jarvis cited several ways news media publishers benefit from AI already, including analyzing and summarizing texts.
“[Generative] AI now enables anyone to write computer code,” he said. “As a tech executive told me on an AI podcast that I co-host, ‘The hottest programming language on planet Earth right now is English.’ Finally, I see business opportunities for publishers to put large language models in front of their content, to allow readers to enter into dialog with that content.”
As they consider legislative proposals related to AI, Jarvis implored the Committee, “Please base decisions that affect internet rights on rational proof of harms, not media’s moral panic.”
Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, said that “currently deployed generative AI tools have been built with ‘stolen goods’ from content creators, including news publishers.”
On December 27, 2023, The New York Times Company filed suit against Microsoft Corporation and OpenAI Inc., alleging copyright infringement and intellectual property theft.
Lynch suggested that publishers and tech companies don’t need to be adversaries. They can cooperate and co-exist fairly through content licensing agreements. It’s important to note that OpenAI is negotiating with publishers to license content.
“Journalism is fundamentally a human pursuit, and it plays an essential and irreplaceable role in our society and our democracy. It takes reporters with grit, integrity, ambition and human creativity to develop the stories that allow free markets, free speech, and freedom itself to thrive,” Lynch suggested. “In each business I’ve led, successful businesses were built on a foundation of licensing content rights. Licensing allows distributors to work together with content creators to innovate new and better consumer experiences and generate profits that were invested in creating more great content. I'm here today because congressional intervention is needed.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) — a champion for the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) — spoke about the existential threat local news outlets face, particularly with the shift in the digital ad market and now the rapidly deploying use of AI.
“This is personal for me. As many of you know, my dad was a journalist. He spent his career as a reporter and columnist. He also had a local radio station and a local TV show. When he retired in 1995, he had written 8,400 columns and 12 million words. And he did it all without AI,” she said.
Sen. Klobuchar explained why local news is so vital to communities nationwide. “This is where they get their disaster alerts. This is when they find out if there's a flood in Missouri. This is how they find out about the fire cleanup in Hawaii. This is how they find out if a blizzard is coming to Minnesota. It's also where they find out their local football scores and if a business is opening. … It’s how the city council is reported on. If that goes away, it literally frays at the connections in our democracies.”
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.
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