Journalism faces challenges of AI, misinformation, declining trust

Jordan Times

30-01-2025

Dean Jelani Cobb delivered a keynote speech at Columbia Global Centre Amman on how we fact-check, combat hate speech and address misinformation (Photo courtesy of CGCA)
AMMAN — Facing challenges in a form of artificial intelligence (AI), economic turmoil and social dynamism, the journalism of 21st century strives to find a way to avoid all these pitfalls and remain relevant.
Columbia Global Centres Amman recently organised a talk titled" Fault lines and Deadlines" where issues related to problems of the modern journalism were addressed by Jelani Cobb, a writer, journalist and professor of Journalism at Columbia University in New York City.
The profession of journalism is experiencing tectonic changes and challenges of scale that is very difficult to find historical comparison, noted Cobb, adding that it has been the steady decrease in the media trust.
"For the long time, I had one understanding of this as a dynamic that was related to very particular, very specific and partisan dynamics in the US and its politics. But in time, I came to observe as have many scholars and people who studied that question about the extent to which this is in fact a global problem that we see a decrease in trust in media across the board," Cobb underlined.
The journalist noted that Reuters Institute conducted studies a few years ago in which only 38 per cent of people in 40 different countries trusted news.
The research was completed before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The contradictory news, misinformation and systematic spread of panic, conspiracy theories and blatant lies, which characterised that period-contributed to even lower trust in printed and online media.
At the point where calibre of the information on the pandemic could be a decisive factor to whether people survived or die from a virus the number of people who trusted media further dropped.
This problem is exacerbated not only by the growing distrust in news organisations but in the growing trust the people and outlets in which public bestowed its faith and given trust to, and the questionable nature of much of the information that is produce in these other kinds of outlets on the Internet and social media and so on, Cobb elaborated.
The writer added: "We can see always present possibility of violence becoming much more prevalent."
Last year, we saw, according to the Committee for the protection of journalists 98 journalists were killed around the world.
This trend is progressive as each year the higher number of journalists, war reporters and editors lose their life while being on duty.
Gaza Strip, West Bank and Lebanon have been places where around 160 journalists were killed and wounded by IDF since October 2023.
"I want to point out that these are not distinct crisis; the escalating number of journalists who have died while conducting their work is connected to the declining trust and faith that the public places in media."
"The less people trust us the more vulnerable we are," Cobb underlined, noting that it is easier to discredit journalists and to make it seem that deaths of reporters have occurred in a course of conducting some nefarious practice on behalf of some questionable policy, but certainly in pursuit of particular agenda.
Another problem is the emergence of artificial intelligence as it greatly enabled the capacity of people to produce misinformation and disinformation at scale.
"AI has brought many challenges aside from gigantic quantity of misinformation and disinformation," Cobb said, adding "as we saw in June last year, the conflict between AI and Forbes Magazine. Forbes Magazine spent months to put in two of its best reporters into a story about Eric Schmidt, a co-founder of Google and his initiative to create a military-grade drone.
"Within the moment of this story being published perplexity AI machinery had generated a lookalike story. A complete paraphrase of all the language, including the quotes but without the reference to Forbes Magazine."
The story was spun into social media posts which gained a great attention, more than the original story from the magazine.
It created also the conflict over copy rights, Cobb underlined, adding that investigative reporting is the most expensive undertakings in any new outlet, however, due to AI investigative reporting may become financially unsustainable.
"AI will cost us jobs. Most certainly in the media landscape and in other landscapes we cannot escape a reality that the emergence of these technologies will result in jobs that are currently filled with human beings no longer being necessary," Cobb underscored.
It is a reality and media employees should deal with it now before it is too late.