Saturday April 6th, Metrobland Media posted this “news” article to their Aurora Banner page:
They couldn’t even manage to get the title correct, claiming a driver was caught “in Aurora” when in the copy the car was caught on Highway 400 north bound which is obviously not within the boundary of Aurora:
Given the decline in journalism this outfit has demonstrated over the past 15 years it doesn’t surprise me that there was no editor available to catch this runaway story before the big publish button was pushed.
The Era Banner’s fledgling credibility in accurate reporting over these years rightly earned itself the Error Banner moniker. But this piece is different as I’m now questioning if there even was a human writer available.
Note that the piece isn’t credited to a single staff member just by “Metroland Staff”.
Sure, but is that an actual person?
On the same site they have a job posting for an “energetic and keen” general assignment reporter to cover the court in Newmarket:
So who is doing that job now?
Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Is the Banner simply letting AI write news pieces now?
Back in 2018 Wolfgang Zehrt wrote a piece titled Journalists vs. robots.
5 years have passed and in that time the Error Banner has been gutted. It’s parent Metrobland Media keeps a skeleton crew of humans to pump out the semblance of journalism but the rest is just a hot mess that is being set on fire.
If Metrobland Media is using AI to write articles they need to incorporate a disclaimer on those pieces.
Failing to do so not only breaks the ability to copyright articles but it breaks an already eroded social contract with its audience. It also may have impacts for how its “local journalism initiative” is funded given that said eligibility for funding is contingent upon organizations hiring journalists or paying freelance journalists to produce civic journalism. There is no mention of AI:
But hey, why worry about any of the things going on behind the curtain.
After all when you go to the site the large green banner set to catch your attention reads “fun & games” with a link to play free online games.
Come for the factually incorrect news, stay for some online games
#Itwasthebestoftimesitwastheblurstoftimes
#CanadianCommunityNewspaperAwardWinningJournalism
#AuroraProud
#SpeedLocal
Watts Trending 