The 181st Block: Running into the fire
The fire that is the news media
This week…
Your reading time is about 7 minutes. Let’s start.
Instagram’s Arabic-to-English translation of “Palestinian” was, for a brief period, “terrorist” before Meta apologised and fixed the problem.1
Also a problem was how some users claimed to be shadow-banned for sharing pro-Palestinian posts on Instagram Stories. For that, Meta acknowledged2 a bug had caused the discoverability issue but said it had nothing to do with the subject matter.
Meanwhile, all of Meta, XTwitter, and TikTok, as recently as this week, have been probed by the EU for their measures to counter disinformation on their platforms under the new Digital Services Act.3 It requires online platforms to do more to address harmful content or risk fines of up to 6 per cent of their global turnover.
As Meta and XTwitter continue to distance themselves from dealing with the news on their platforms, YouTube is instead doing the opposite, rolling out a function to suggest more news from “authoritative” sources.4
I wonder if these other social media giants feel like YouTube is running towards the fire because I think they might be sitting back and nervously laughing right now.
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
ICYMI: The Previous Block focused on a few conspiracy theories, new and old, but also ones that could affect young audiences. CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.‘Here is the news. You can’t stop us’: AI anchor Zae-In grants us an interview
Amelia Tait for The Guardian:
Like most newsreaders, Zae-In wears a microphone pinned to her collar and clutches a stack of notes – but unlike most, her face is entirely fake. A “virtual human” designed by South Korean artificial intelligence company Pulse9, Zae-In spent five months this year reading live news bulletins on national broadcaster SBS. That, you might think, is it then. To adapt the words of another animated newscaster: “I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.” The future is now. The world belongs to the artificially intelligent and the News at Ten will never be the same again.
Are things really that simple? Since spring, country after country have debuted their first AI news anchor: India has Sana and Lisa, Greece has Hermes, Kuwait has Fedha and Taiwan has Ni Zhen. “She is bright, gorgeous, ageless, tireless and speaks multiple languages, and is totally under my control,” said Kalli Purie, the vice chairperson of the India Today Group, when Sana first appeared in March. For broadcasters, it’s easy to see the appeal of AI: virtual presenters can read rolling news for 24 hours unpaid and unfed, and it’s unlikely they’ll ever skip the queue at a lying-in-state.
The problem will be the “solutions” provided by human vloggers presenting themselves as legitimate news sources on the Internet. Oh, wait…
As misinformation surges during the Israel-Hamas war, where is AI?
Alex Mahadevan for Poynter:
The war was the first real test of experts’ warnings about the threat of generative AI. Their hypothesis that it would increase the quality and quantity of misinformation has so far remained unproven. Coincidentally, a group of experts Wednesday published a peer-reviewed article in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review calling such concerns “overblown.”
While AI may increase the quantity of misinformation, people still have finite attention spans, according to the commentary. Just because the amount of fake images increases, doesn’t necessarily mean the demand for those falsehoods will. (The full paper is definitely worth the read.)
Okay, I’m supposed to feel good about this, right?
Major US news networks sideline Palestinian analysts
Mari Cohen for Jewish Currents:
A 2020 +972 Magazine piece by the historian Maha Nassar found that since 1979, only 46 of 2,490 New York Times op-eds discussing Palestine were authored by Palestinians.
And Palestinian journalists, as well as Arab and Muslim journalists more generally, often find that this marginalisation intensifies during periods of active conflict in Israel/Palestine. Last Friday, Semafor reported that in the week following the Hamas attacks, MSNBC had temporarily removed or postponed host appearances by three Muslim journalists—Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin, and Ali Velshi. Anonymous MSNBC staff members told Semafor that they were concerned these shifts were attempts to sideline anchors with “some of the deepest knowledge of the conflict,” although the network insisted that all such scheduling moves were coincidental. Semafor also reported that MSNBC executives had previously been uneasy about critical coverage of Israel during the country’s 2021 bombing of Gaza, with some “privately express[ing] discomfort” with coverage that highlighted the impact on Palestinian civilians.
According to reporting by Slate in 2021, several journalists who covered Israel/Palestine for major American newspapers in the 2010s similarly faced pressure to moderate their coverage. Journalists recalled that senior managers often interfered with their reporting on what was happening in Gaza; one said that because of that pressure, they had “some trouble reporting the truth” of what they were witnessing on the ground. One major newspaper reporter recalled that their editors would challenge their firsthand accounts of Palestinian casualties “in a way the IDF’s point of view was never scrutinised.”
I don’t monitor US coverage of “international news”5 very closely because I think they do it poorly and extremely “me-me-me” (or us-US-USAAAAAAAAA), so I’m not surprised at all by this report. Jewish Currents is also a US-based news source, but I reckon they’re among the few good eggs.
What I read, listen, and watch…
I’m reading Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. Spontaneously combusting children are a quirky vehicle for social commentary, but it works.
I’m listening to “How do science journalists evaluate psychology papers?” an episode of Everything Hertz hosted by Dan Quintana and James Heathers.
I’m watching Abigail Thorn’s video essay on ethical AI.
I’m playing Trust & Safety Tycoon, a browser-based game simulating what it's like to run a trust and safety team at a social media company. It’s not easy – I’ll give you that for a heads-up.
Other curious links:
“The secret life of Jimmy Zhong, who stole – and lost – more than $3 billion” by Eamon Javer and Paige Tortorelli for CNBC. I’m glad the journalists ensured readers knew what happened to the dog. It would’ve kept me up all night.
“Into the alternate world of copy songs” by Lu Min Lwin for Kontinentalist.
“How CBC News uses the words ‘terrorist,’ ‘terrorism’” by editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon for CBC News.
“New paper explores the rise of ‘incels’” by Anna Lamb for The Harvard Gazette.
“Half a million kinksters can’t be wrong” by Aella for Asterisk.
“Wait, wait, don’t tell me how this Canadian radio show became a TikTok hit” by Sarah Scire for Nieman Lab.
“Elecciones en Argentina: la fuerza de la retórica antisistema en las redes” por Cecilia Galván y Gabriela Hadid en El País.
« Marketing d’influence, version enfant » par Catherine Handfield dans La Presse.
Chart of the week
From data journalist Mona Chalabi, with more context on Instagram.
And one more thing
The Starting Block is a weekly collection of annotated media observations focusing on disinformation, data, and democracy beyond the Anglo-Western sphere. Read the archives. Find me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads. Learn more about what I do here. Send questions, corrections, and suggestions to tinacarmillia@substack.com.
Cole, Samantha. “Instagram ‘Sincerely Apologizes’ For Inserting ‘Terrorist’ Into Palestinian Bio Translations.” 404 Media, 20 Oct. 2023, www.404media.co/instagram-palestinian-arabic-bio-translation/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2023.
“Meta’s Ongoing Efforts Regarding the Israel-Hamas War.” Meta, 18 Oct. 2023, about.fb.com/news/2023/10/metas-efforts-regarding-israel-hamas-war/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2023.
Campenhout, Charlotte Van, and Bart Meijer. “Meta, TikTok given a Week by EU to Detail Measures against Disinformation.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 19 Oct. 2023, www.reuters.com/technology/eu-asks-meta-tiktok-clarity-steps-against-disinformation-illegal-content-2023-10-19/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2023.
“Navigating YouTube News and Information - How YouTube Works.” YouTube, www.youtube.com/intl/ALL_ca/howyoutubeworks/product-features/news-information/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2023.
Serra, Barbara. There’s No Such Thing as “International News,” News with a Foreign Accent, 31 May 2023, barbaraserra.substack.com/p/theres-no-such-thing-as-international. Accessed 22 Oct. 2023.
Great read today.
Honestly I was close to blocking this account cuz I feel you are at the very least a human sympathizer but we can agree to disagree on that and anyway I still agree with you that we should keep our news sources diverse so I'll stick around