Journalists Should Use More AI

Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Has entered all Namibian newsrooms.

Seven out of 10 journalists in Namibia use AI for their work, at least once a week, according to a survey by the NMT Media Foundation.

The picture painted by the survey and the many impressions from discussions in the journalism community are similar: Nearly everyone uses it, but the use is mostly individual, and usually without disclosing it.

There is little training and even fewer guidelines from newsrooms.

We must talk about AI in journalism; we need to learn about machine learning and make the machine work for our human values.

Journalism is a human craft, you cannot do it alone.

For Brazilian educator Paulo Freire one can only be human by shaping the world through inquiry: “ . . . the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”

That’s what journalists do.

Informing the audience is what makes our work meaningful.

Journalism provides reliable facts, facilitates dialogue, holds power to account, and builds trust, the pillars we need for peace, sustainable development and human rights.

GENUINE THREAT

AI poses genuine threats to media freedom. It manipulates information ecosystems, erodes diversity of opinions and perspectives and generates disinformation at a scale and speed that overwhelms the capacity of journalism to respond.

It is a massive attack on information integrity.

There is an avalanche of websites where the meaning is calculated, words predicted and guessed, burying content written by humans – information that is verified, researched, investigated, thought through.

On top of that – AI-generated disinformation and propaganda.

Journalistic content is minced by AI crawlers and digested by algorithms. The facts are drowned in the excrements of AI.

The add-ons of AI companies include addictive designs, algorithmic censorship and content control.
The most tragic impact of AI is the loss of cultural diversity and creativity.

As AI predicts text based on probabilities calculated from enormous amounts of data, the output is an average.

Statistical means without feeling and spice, usually quite mediocre and boring. A human journalist understands meaning and shares experiences; an algorithm can only guess words.

ECONOMIC PRESSURE

Journalism is under severe economic pressure. Social media eroded the traditional advertising model. AI platforms are now redirecting news traffic away from newsrooms.

At the same time, they ingest the content from news outlets in Namibia to train their large language models.

To deliver value to their customers, they need photojournalists to take pictures, and reporters to cover news stories. The bot does not get out of the data centre.

Unlike big United States media companies, Namibian newsrooms cannot sue for copyright violations or hold distant tech giants accountable.

Even as South Africa offers a precedent – with its competition commission securing a R688-million media support package from Google – it seems impossible for Namibia’s small media economy to compete against platforms vastly more powerful than the country itself.

Meta’s revenue is 15 times Namibia’s gross domestic product (GDP), and Google is economically as big as South Africa.

Furthermore, the impact of Big Tech on the global flow of information is not shaped by caring for information as a public good.

It is shaped by their investors, their market domination and how they make profits.

AI undermines information integrity, media viability and cultural diversity. But that does not mean we should not use AI in the newsroom.

Quite the opposite. Newsrooms should use more AI. Why? Precisely because it has such a fundamental impact on journalism and humanity.

UNDERSTANDING IS KEY

We really need to understand: How does it work? What can it do? What are its limits?

To understand AI we need to use it, take it apart, experiment with different tools, see it make mistakes, and learn to find the sneaky little bias that hides behind the jargon, the bullet points and the buddy-like “What’s up next, Peter?”.

For newsroom staff that means getting their heads into algorithms, prompts and data bases; to take their workflows and put them into digital pipelines where AI can help with reliable journalism.

But we can’t leave our critical thinking at the login. We need a human perspective, we need to look closely, think critically, and discuss what AI does with humans.

At the end of these experiments, we will understand the technology and its limits better, and maybe even have a tool that works for us.

Automated spell checks, transcriptions and translation give us time to focus on research, storytelling, and talking to human sources.

If we develop the right tools and workflows for our human colleagues, AI can support better journalism for Namibian communities.

Translation into the many beautiful Namibian languages would be a good place to start.

Yet everyone who regularly sets foot into Namibian newsrooms also knows that it is extremely difficult for the editorial team to free up time for innovation and experimentation.

Providing a comprehensive coverage of what happens in Namibia is a stretch with such small teams.

BIGGER TEAM

But team journalism is bigger. Our colleagues in Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and beyond are part of the same struggle.

We are a community. And World Press Freedom Day is also about international solidarity and cooperation.

One colleague in the survey said: “I hope one day we get to where we have news organisations in Africa which put together resources, run AI in Africa, and keep changing it with the African perspective.”

And that is a wonderful vision – to have AI that supports independent journalism, aligned with our human values, protects sources, provides reporting that serves the audience and reflects the diversity of perspective on the African continent.
Let’s start.

• Peter Deselaers works for DW Akademie, the media development branch of Germany’s international public broadcaster. He is the programme director for Namibia and southern Africa and heads DW Akademie’s regional office in Windhoek. His work focuses on AI in journalism, freedom of expression and quality journalism, and journalism education.

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