News
Archival Producers Alliance: Best Practices for Use of Generative AI in Documentaries
For Stephanie Jenkins, establishing AI best practices for documentary film began as a game of catch-up, after she discovered last year that producers in the field had already begun to experiment with deploying generative AI to create false historical footage, images, and artifacts, with little or no disclosure or guardrails. Last month, she and other industry veterans released a new Best Practices guide for Use of Generative AI in Documentaries through the newly-formed Archival Producers Alliance (APA). In this edition of Decoded, Managing Editor Ryan Howzell sat down with Jenkins and fellow APA Co-Director Rachel Antell to discuss the APA's new guide and what multimedia journalists and producers stand to learn from it.

Chalkbeat Code of Ethics – Interviewing Kids, Teacher Fear in the Time of Book Bans
With schools back in session, it’s a great time to take a look at Chalkbeat’s Code of Ethics and see what the education-focused nonprofit newsroom can teach journalists – in and out of schools – about working with minors and about accountability.

Ethics and Democracy | Everyday Ethics
Received Hacked Info? Now What? Five Takeaways About How to Ethically Navigate Reporting of Hacked Materials
Source scrutiny, foreign intervention, audience transparency and more in our takeaways from our September event with Semafor's Ben Smith, Columbia Journalism Review's Sewell Chan, and Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor of the Associated Press.

Ethics and Diversity | Everyday Ethics
Confronting Falsehoods Carries Risks for the Press. So Does Ignoring Them.
Donald Trump's and J.D. Vance's recent comments about Haitian immigrants present a familiar challenge to journalists: how to report on misinformation without amplifying it.

How AI Journalists are Protecting Real Reporters in Venezuela
In the United States, newsrooms’ adoption of generative AI has fueled concerns that real-life journalists may be pushed to the background.
Ethics and Diversity | Everyday Ethics
Guest Column: Is An On-The-Record Interview a Sign of Journalistic Virtue? I’m Not So Sure.
When I started in journalism in the mid-1980s I was given a diktat. Never share a quote in advance with an interview subject. I never did.
How I’m Trying to Use Generative AI as a Journalism Engineer — Ethically
This article was originally published on The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates how powerful institutions are using technology to change our society. Read the original article on their website. By: Tomas Apodaca Hello, readers! I’m Tomas Apodaca, a journalism engineer at The Markup and CalMatters. It’s my job to write software and analyze data […]
On Hacked Documents, Journalism and the Motives of Sources
Highlighting a weakness in much of day-to-day coverage.
Was It Unethical Not to Cover Biden’s Apparent Decline?
Story selection isn’t covered prominently in most newsroom ethics codes, but what we do or don’t choose to publish is a matter of journalistic ethics as much as anything else. Days after the Democratic National Convention, Ethics & Journalism Initiative Director Steve Adler describes the press’s reluctance to cover President Biden’s apparent decline before the June 27 debate as a significant ethical failure.

DC Says Gun Violence is a Public Health Crisis. Will newsrooms cover it like one? Ask Dr. Jon LaPook.
While this health-centric framing may have been new for Washington, it’s an approach some medical journalists like CBS News’s Chief Medical Correspondent Jon LaPook have embraced for years.
