Subbu Vincent

@alixdunn.com @doriantaylor.com @davekarpf.bsky.social

The confidence makes people dismantle safeguards, so watch out.

This Y Combinator thread went on a blast over the weekend (T/H my friend Rohit Khare for flagging it to me.)
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4702...

And the actual retraction
arstechnica.com/staff/2026/0...

With secondary work, the smooth and confident responses from AI bots is a removal of friction that slips the brain. Worldwide, tons of writers might be quoting people from secondary text and might simply be falling for how the bots respond so confidently.

Primary sourcing with people is usually direct line of communication. You may also feel a greater responsibility to your source, and may send their quotes back to them to double-check. More human investment overall.

The risk is higher for secondary sourcing because of how AI works.

For primary sources, precisely because you as a reporter found something your source said was worth quoting, your brain (memory) is also likely to give you at least faint warning that the AI tool is producing a “quote” that you did not *actually hear* when you talked to the person.

But there is more to this: the risks are not the same for primary and secondary sourcing. When journalists talk to a source directly, it is primary sourcing. Where you pull from a source’s speech already posted elsewhere, in this case a blog, it is secondary sourcing.

It is a cardinal lesson. The basic safeguard Edwards said he ought to have followed - simply comparing the generated text with the lines he wanted to pull from the blog post verbatim - would have helped catch the quotes error. The key thing is you have to apply that safeguard all the time.

Last weekend, Ars Technica retracted an AI-involved-news story by reporter Benj Edwards because it had fabricated quotes. Edwards has already explained how it happened, taken responsibility, and said that he had asked his boss to pull the piece.
bsky.app/profile/benj...

Yep it is. And this type of inquiry is doable.

I don’t know of published datasets that combine source attributions with analysis of language for promotion/PR/framing for tech companies, but that’s a valid hypothesis already.. will check

Fall Registration for Race, Media & International Affairs with Karen Attiah — Resistance Study Series A virtual, seven week beginner and intermediate course on the history of race, mass media, and the modern world order.

So many people are asking how they can support me..

The best way .. is to support @resistanceschool.bsky.social!

I’ll be teaching Race, Media and International Affairs 101 and 102 next month.

Sign up for lectures by me and guest speakers!

www.resistancesummerschool.com/fall-2025-re...

Statement from @postguild.bsky.social on the firing of Karen Attiah:

"The executive branch cannot be both the arbiter of legality of media content, and the issuer of takedown notices" @subbuvincent.bsky.social says as @reuters.com documents scope of Indian government crackdown - including on inconvenient news, satire, cartoons, etc. www.reuters.com/business/med...

Thirteen Journalists on How They Are Rethinking Ethics We asked newsroom leaders and ethicists what they’re keeping or changing in an era of Trump, “fake news,” AI, and industry decline.

All star group on how journalism is failing to respond to authoritarian elites, fake news, and AI--and how it can pivot to meet the moment. @subbuvincent.bsky.social @jayrosen.bsky.social @joelsimonsays.bsky.social and others. www.cjr.org/feature/thir...

Great piece by @subbuvincent.bsky.social on avoiding both-sidesism and ignoring fake controversies!

"Once you take somebody else’s framing, and you make it part of your controversy, you’ve legitimized the controversy... A better approach is: Determine whether something is a controversy or not."

To Counter Authoritarianism, Can Journalism Promote Democratic Culture?

Subbu's piece builds on the framework he developed in this June 2024 piece on pro-democracy journalism. kettering.org/to-counter-a...

New on our blog: How can news media resist authoritarian efforts to control the narrative? Journalism scholar @subbuvincent.bsky.social shows a new model is starting to emerge in recent coverage of the Trump admin.

How to Write Fairer, More Accurate Headlines - Ethics and Journalism New guidance from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics lays out three principles for ethical headline writing and offers guidance for newsrooms that want to achieve them.

News headlines are the first and most important interface between readers and journalists, but few news organizations address the mechanics of headline writing in their ethics codes. Read our latest with @subbuvincent.bsky.social on his new guidance for newsrooms balancing ethics and SEO:

Yes Andy, and thank you. I forgot to give Paul and Burt the link to insert into the schedule. I’ll do that today. DM me your email and I’ll send you the deck anyway.

I’m looking to leading this session and meeting fellow Hacks/Hackers summiteers at Baltimore soon!

How a Black-led journalism project uses technology to address systemic inequalities in California By Nevin Thompson, Hacks/Hackers Marketing & Communications Lead In the years following the 2020 murder of Black American George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, racism was…

JSK alum Paulette Brown-Hinds and her team at Mapping Black California build data visualization tools that expose systemic inequalities and hold institutions accountable. How they give communities the necessary information to push for real change...

Oscar-nominated filmmaker resigns from duPont-Columbia journalism awards over school’s concessions to Trump - Poynter Julie Cohen, co-director of ‘RGB,’ resigned from the duPont-Columbia Awards committee, saying, ‘In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.’

I've resigned from the jury for the duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards in response to Columbia's capitulation to Trump.
www.poynter.org/commentary/2...

Great Q. There is no openly and transparently justified value-add, it just isn't in the premise. It seems to come from a misplaced assumption about the worth of journalistic power itself. That reflexive neutrality to describe power is a higher norm than using democratic culture as the yardstick.

And that unfinished sentence is still there this afternoon, March 17th, 2025.

Perhaps they find the sheer acts of documenting executive orders and actions in plain written word too bothersome?

To Counter Authoritarianism, Can Journalism Promote Democratic Culture?

And I wrote about this very thing here. And I explained why journalistic practice owes democracy every day.
kettering.org/to-counter-a...

t/h @carlamurphy.bsky.social

Hi Surya, would you DM me you email? I saw the CITP article on your work (Feb 14) and liked the rare point you made about giving people agency. Would like to check in with you more, and include your views in stuff I might write. I am an engineer like you who got into journalism and much later ethics

UT Dallas tried to squelch the students who ran the campus newspaper. They decided to do their own thing and launch an independent counter-news outlet. American muckraking at work?
www.texastribune.org/2025/02/07/u...

This feels like eons ago now, and so much water down the rivers since then!

Thank you for the reply Eric. This is a chronic editorial ethics issue that plagues journalism.

Eric, did they allow you to sign off or veto the final edited version of your piece? I.e. did you have the option to say NO to running such a piece with your name on it, given the editing?

(I'm considering making this a use case for my work on editorial policy and I wanted to ask you this first!)

Neutrality has a role in journalism when the facts are legitimately in dispute. Fact-finding and diverse sourcing need to determine the truths on the ground.