Hacker News with Generative AI: Journalism

Journalists launch legal action against Italian government over spyware claims (theguardian.com)
Italy’s national union for journalists has submitted a criminal complaint to prosecutors in Rome after Giorgia Meloni’s government shut down questions in parliament over suspicions it had illegally used spyware technology to hack the phones of critics instead of criminals.
Journalism, Italy, Government, Surveillance, Law
11 points by adrian_mrd 2 days ago | 0 comments
America Needs a Working-Class Media (cjr.org)
Catering to rich audiences is not serving us.
Media, Journalism, Politics, Social Class
13 points by leotravis10 2 days ago | 2 comments
The irony of Elon Musk's attack on public broadcasters (indexoncensorship.org)
Once lauded as bastions of American patriotism, media outlets such as Radio Free Europe and Voice of America are now being labelled enemies of the state
Media, Politics, Journalism, United States
10 points by robtherobber 2 days ago | 3 comments
US publisher uses linguistic gymnastics to avoid saying outage due to ransomware (theregister.com)
US newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises is blaming its recent service disruptions on a "cybersecurity attack," per a regulatory filing, and is the latest company to avoid using the dreaded R word.
Ransomware, Cybersecurity, Journalism, News Media, Technology
5 points by rntn 3 days ago | 1 comments
New York Times goes all-in on internal AI tools (semafor.com)
The New York Times is greenlighting the use of AI for its product and editorial staff, saying that internal tools could eventually write social copy, SEO headlines, and some code.
Artificial Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Technology
22 points by marban 5 days ago | 4 comments
Over half of LLM-written news summaries have "significant issues"–BBC analysis (arstechnica.com)
Frequent problems include mangled quotes, editorializing, and outdated info.
News, Media, Artificial Intelligence, Journalism
14 points by pitwin 7 days ago | 3 comments
AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds (theregister.com)
Still smarting from Apple Intelligence butchering a headline, the BBC has published research into how accurately AI assistants summarize news – and the results don't make for happy reading.
Artificial Intelligence, News, Journalism, Media, Research
23 points by isaacfrond 8 days ago | 7 comments
Associated Press Barred from Oval Office for Not Using 'Gulf of America' (theguardian.com)
The Associated Press said it was barred from sending a reporter to Tuesday’s Oval Office executive order signing in an effort to “punish” the agency for its style guidance on upholding the use of the name of the Gulf of Mexico, in lieu of Donald Trump’s preferred name for the geographic landmark as the Gulf of America.
Politics, Journalism, United States
96 points by healsdata 10 days ago | 56 comments
AI chatbots unable to accurately summarise news, BBC finds (bbc.com)
Four major artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are inaccurately summarising news stories, according to research carried out by the BBC.
Artificial Intelligence, News, Journalism, Technology, Research
10 points by yagyu 10 days ago | 0 comments
'social network' attacking pesticide critics shuts down after investigation (theguardian.com)
A US company that was secretly profiling hundreds of food and environmental health advocates in a private web portal has said it has halted the operations in the face of widespread backlash, after its actions were revealed by the Guardian and other reporting partners.
Social Media, Advocacy, Environmentalism, Journalism, Transparency
67 points by rguiscard 11 days ago | 18 comments
Steve Wynn vs. the Associated Press [pdf] (supremecourt.gov)
Law, Media, Journalism, Supreme Court
5 points by wahnfrieden 14 days ago | 2 comments
How Scientific American went from publishing Einstein to calling Jedi racist (thetimes.com)
Science, Media, Journalism, History, Racism
6 points by yostrovs 14 days ago | 5 comments
Memory-Holing Jan. 6: What Happens When You Try to Make History Vanish? (propublica.org)
The Trump administration’s decision to delete a DOJ database of cases against Capitol riot defendants places those who seek to preserve the historical record in direct opposition to their own government.
Politics, History, Government, Law Enforcement, Journalism
12 points by hn_acker 15 days ago | 6 comments
EFF Helps Defeat Meritless Lawsuit Against Journalist Jack Poulson (eff.org)
Jack Poulson is a reporter, and when a confidential source sent him the police report of a tech CEO’s arrest for felony domestic violence, he did what journalists do: reported the news.
Journalism, Lawsuits, Technology
9 points by pcvarmint 16 days ago | 0 comments
25 Years Ago, Joan Didion Kept a Diary. It's About to Become Public (nytimes.com)
In December 1999, around her 65th birthday, Joan Didion started writing a journal after sessions with her psychiatrist. Over the next year or so, she kept notes about their conversations, which covered her struggles with anxiety, guilt and depression, her sometimes fraught relationship with her daughter, and her thoughts about her work and legacy.
Journalism, Personal Diaries, Mental Health, Celebrities, Literature
7 points by Caiero 16 days ago | 1 comments
The FAA’s Hiring Scandal (tracingwoodgrains.com)
After my story on the FAA’s hiring scandal went viral, many of the people impacted and involved in bringing it to light reached out to me to share their stories in detail.
Government, Corruption, Journalism, Aviation
739 points by firebaze 17 days ago | 666 comments
Nellie Bly (wikipedia.org)
Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran; May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922), better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days in emulation of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg, and for an exposé in which she worked undercover to report on a mental institution from within.
Journalism, Biography, History, Women's History
87 points by samclemens 17 days ago | 14 comments
Amazon sues to block public records request from Washington Post (hollywoodreporter.com)
Amazon, Lawsuits, Journalism, Privacy
14 points by anigbrowl 17 days ago | 0 comments
YouTube restores SineVibes channel after Peter Kirn & Ars Technica get involved (bsky.app)
YouTube, Music, Controversy, Journalism, Social Media
78 points by richrichardsson 17 days ago | 34 comments
Zero-click WhatsApp spyware targeted 90 journalists, says Meta (9to5mac.com)
Nearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon Solutions, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged on Friday.
Cybersecurity, Privacy, Social Media, Journalism
23 points by mikece 18 days ago | 8 comments
Everything About Trump's Spending Freeze Order You Were Too Afraid to Ask (crisesnotes.com)
This is a free piece of Notes on the Crises. Reader support which makes my Freedom of Information Act project, archival research and general writing possible (including my #MonetaryPolicy201 series). Monday is the last day paid subscriptions are 50% off so take advantage while you still can
Politics, Economy, Journalism
11 points by enraged_camel 20 days ago | 0 comments
LA Times Flips Anti-RFK Jr. Op-Ed into Pro-Kennedy Propaganda (techdirt.com)
Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the LA Times, has been promising to restore trust in media over the last few months. Instead, he has launched an escalating campaign of editorial interference that accomplishes exactly the opposite.
Media, Politics, Journalism, Public Relations, Propaganda
115 points by hn_acker 21 days ago | 12 comments
WhatsApp Says Some Users Targeted by Israeli Spyware (gizmodo.com)
WhatsApp says that civil society workers and journalists on its platform were the targets of hacks by the Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions.
Privacy, Surveillance, Cybersecurity, Journalism, Israel
8 points by siltcakes 21 days ago | 0 comments
Amazon sues WA state over Washington Post request for Kuiper records (geekwire.com)
The company that Jeff Bezos founded has gone to court to keep the newspaper he owns from finding out too much about the inner workings of its business.
Amazon, Lawsuits, Journalism, Space, Business
14 points by _JamesA_ 22 days ago | 0 comments
Inside a network of AI-generated newsletters targeting "small town America" (niemanlab.org)
Good Daily, which operates in 47 states and 355 towns and cities across the U.S., is run by one person.
Artificial Intelligence, Journalism, Local News, Marketing
28 points by giuliomagnifico 24 days ago | 4 comments
Departing the New York Times (contrarian.substack.com)
As many people reading this know, last month I retired from my position as an opinion writer at the New York Times—a job I had done for 25 years.
Journalism, Opinion Writing
160 points by herbertl 24 days ago | 52 comments
Newsstands, 2012-2019 (trevortraynor.com)
"Photographer Trevor Traynor’s global odyssey documenting the newsstands of the world is a remarkable record of newsprint as a construction medium". - Edwin HeathCote, FT Weekend.
Photography, Journalism, Design, Travel
54 points by NaOH 24 days ago | 6 comments
Umlauts, Diaereses, and the New Yorker (2020) (arrantpedantry.com)
Several weeks ago, the satirical viral content site Clickhole posted this article: “Going Rogue: ‘The New Yorker’ Has Announced That They’re Going To Start Putting An Umlaut Over Every Letter ‘O’ And No One Can Stop Them”.
Language, Satire, Journalism
35 points by jplrssn 26 days ago | 39 comments
Interview with Andy Yen, CEO of Proton VPN (compiler.news)
As the official campaigning period in Venezuela’s presidential election began earlier this summer, one by one, news websites started to go offline. First, two fact-checking websites, Cazadores de Fake News and Es Paja, went dark for Venezuelan users. Within a week, a handful of other fact-checking and civil society sites were blocked. As election day approached, the blocks snowballed, with more than 70 media outlets and NGO sites—and even Wikipedia—inaccessible by the end of the month.
VPN, Censorship, Venezuela, Election, Journalism
82 points by SerCe 26 days ago | 86 comments
The protester's guide to smartphone security (privacyguides.org)
For most protesters, activists, and journalists, your smartphone is an essential tool you depend on for organizing with your peers, accessing and distributing information, and helping others. It also represents a great risk, as a tool that is easily appropriated by authorities for targeted and mass surveillance.
Privacy, Security, Protests, Journalism
479 points by nameequalsmain 26 days ago | 232 comments