[Infowarrior] - 'Robo-reporter' computer program raises questions about future of journalists

[Richard Forno]

'Robo-reporter' computer program raises questions about future of journalists

By Jesse M. Kelly, Postmedia News March 26, 2013

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/story.html?id=8156059

Journalist Ken Schwencke has occasionally awakened in the morning to find his byline atop a news story he didn’t write.

No, it’s not that his employer, The Los Angeles Times, is accidentally putting his name atop other writers’ articles. Instead, it’s a reflection that Schwencke, digital editor at the respected U.S. newspaper, wrote an algorithm — that then wrote the story for him.

Instead of personally composing the pieces, Schwencke developed a set of step-by-step instructions that can take a stream of data — this particular algorithm works with earthquake statistics, since he lives in California — compile the data into a pre-determined structure, then format it for publication.

His fingers never have to touch a keyboard; he doesn’t have to look at a computer screen. He can be sleeping soundly when the story writes itself.

Just call him robo-reporter.

“I doubt that people who read our (web) posts — unless they religiously read the earthquake posts and realize they almost universally follow the same pattern — would notice,” Schwencke said.  “I don’t think most people are thinking that robots are writing the news.”

But in this case, they are.  And that has raised questions about the future of flesh-and-blood journalists, and about journalism ethics.

Algorithms are fairly versatile, and have been doing a great number of things we sometimes don’t even think about, from beating us at computerized chess, to auto-correcting our text messages.

Jamie Dwyer holds a bachelor of science in computing science from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, and provides IT support for Environment Canada. Dwyer said algorithms can be highly complex computer codes or relatively simple mathematical formulas. They can even sometimes function as a recipe of sorts, or a set of repeatable steps, designed to perform a specific function.

In this case, the algorithm functions to derive and compose coherent news stories from a stream of data.

Schwencke says the use of algorithms on routine news tasks frees up professional reporters to make phone calls, do actual interviews, or dig through sophisticated reports and complex data, instead of compiling basic information such as dates, times and locations.

“It lightens the load for everybody involved,” he said.

Yet there are ethical questions — such as putting someone’s name atop a written article he or she didn’t in fact write or research.

Alfred Hermida, associate professor at the University of British Columbia, and a former journalist, teaches a course in social media, in which he takes time to examine how algorithms affect our understanding of information.

He says that algorithms, like human beings, need to decide what is worth including, and make judgments on newsworthiness.

“If the journalist has essentially built that algorithm with those values, then it is their work,” Hermida said. “All the editorial decisions were made by the reporter, but they were made by the reporter in an algorithm.”

The greater issue, he says, is demystifying the technology for the reader.

Hermida says that many of the algorithms we encounter everyday exist in a black box of sorts, in which we see the results, but do not understand the process.

“Understanding how the algorithms work is really important to how we understand the information,” Hermida said.

Algorithms like Schwencke’s are relatively simple, for now. They’re best suited to small-scale streams of data that are being regularly updated with consistently formatted information.

For instance, baseball may be a good avenue for news algorithms, because the game is heavy with statistics, says Paul Knox, associate professor for the School of Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto.

But even if an algorithm can analyze and manipulate data fairly well, journalism is still based on not only filtering, but also finding other available information, Knox notes, and a mathematical construct lacks the ability to dig up new facts or add context.

On the other hand, “People are already reading automated data reports that come to them, and they don’t think anything of it,” said Ben Welsh, a colleague of Schwencke’s at the Times.

One example is any smartphone app that displays personalized weather information based on the owner’s location.

“That’s a case where I don’t think anyone really blinks,” Welsh said. “It’s just a kind of natural computerization and personalization of a data report that had been done in a pretty standard way by newspapers for probably a century.”

And Welsh says that responsibility for accuracy falls where it always has: with publications, and with individual journalists.

“The key thing is just to be honest and transparent with your readers, like always,” he said. “I think that whether you write the code that writes the news or you write it yourself, the rules are still the same.”

“You need to respect your reader. You need to be transparent with them, you need to be as truthful as you can… all the fundamentals of journalism just remain the same.”

Although algorithms in news are paired with simple data sets for now, as they get more complicated, more questions will be raised about how to effectively code ethics into the process.

Lisa Taylor is a lawyer and a journalist who teaches an ethics class to undergraduate students in the School of Journalism at Ryerson University.

“Ultimately, it’s not about the tool,” said Lisa Taylor, a lawyer and journalist who teaches ethics at Ryerson. “At (the algorithms’) very genesis, we have human judgment.”

Taylor said that using algorithms ethically and reasonably shouldn’t be difficult; the onus is on the reporter to decide which tools to use and how to use them properly.

“The complicating factor here is a deep suspicion journalists and news readers have that any technological advancement is going to be harnessed purely for its cost-cutting abilities,” said Taylor.

According to Taylor, journalists will have to start discussing algorithms, just as they talk about Twitter.

“How can we use this effectively, reasonably, and in a way that honours the (tenets) of journalism?” Taylor asked.

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Read more: http://www.canada.com/Robo+reporter+raises+questions+about+future+journalists/8154672/story.html#ixzz2PP3TLGyN


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