[AnonC]

Journalists and bloggers usually write about others’ mess ups and apologies, dissecting which apologies are authentic and which apologies are non-apologies.

In this incident, Aurich Lawson of Ars Technica deleted the original article (which had LLM hallucinated quotes) instead of updating it with the error. He then published a vague non-apology, just like large companies and politicians usually do. And now we learn that this reporter was fired and yet Ars Technica doesn’t publish a snippet of an article about it.

There’s something to be said about the value of owning up to issues and being forthright with actions and consequences. In this age of indignation and fear of being perceived as weak or vulnerable due to honesty, I would’ve thought that Ars would be or could’ve been a beacon for how things should be talked about.

It’s sad to see Ars Technica at this level.

[beloch]

"I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words,” Edwards continued. He emphasized that the “text of the article was human-written by us, and this incident was isolated and is not representative of Ars‘ editorial standards."

----------

A reporter whose bailiwick is AI should have known that he needed to check any quotes an LLM spat out. The editorial staff should have been checking too, and this absolutely is representative of their standards if they weren't.

It would probably be worth checking to see if any other articles or employees have similarly disappeared.

[b112]

Editorial staff?

There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared.

Purely online entities have no way to pay for real editorial staff.

News has no money, compared to news of old. It's part of the reason 99% of modern news is just reporting other people's tweets or whatever.

I can't imagine many news companies having much money for court battles (to force disclosure of documents, or force declassification, or fighting to protect sources). Or spending months or years investigating a story.

Our news sources are poor, weak now.

[troyvit]

> Editorial staff?

> There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared.

In a lot of ways you're right, but our public radio station (cpr.org) has the largest newsroom in the state, and that newsroom makes up over a third of our staff. So yeah "news companies" don't have news rooms but that's because their business isn't news. It's funneling user data to their parent companies and getting people to click ads.

However, thanks to "listeners [and viewers, and surfers] like you" public media is still working its ass off to make a difference despite being cut lose from the government. It won't work unless you switch your perspective to local news (where most of the real information is anyway) and unless you donate.

Apologies for turning a comment into a mini fund-drive :)

[ThunderSizzle]

Agreed. Modern news is beyond lazy, and is not journalism by any means. Too many talking heads do nothing but sit behind a screen watching others for what to say next.

Granted, a few of the remaining newspapers I'm aware of run business awards (Best restaurant, etc), and the way to win is via wining and dining them, even though the paper claims it's based on people's votes.

That style of thinking - of entitlement - probably brought the lack of interest in both cable news and traditional web/paper outlets - as the younger generations started to see through it more.

[katzgrau]

I think you missed the point of the parent comment.

The money (from advertising) that used to go to news now goes elsewhere (Google and Meta).

It’s left very little in terms of resources for staff.

Think about what the quality of commercial software would be like if there wasn’t enough money for QA and testers and top tier devs capped out at $180k with starting roles at 30k and 40k.

That’s the news industry right now. Poorer quality product.

[mikkupikku]

The money used to go to Hearst and co. The golden age of journalism is mostly a mirage.

[plufz]

I can’t talk for the US but here in Sweden most news media have fewer journalists today. Is that not the case in your country or in what way is it a mirage?

[WarmWash]

How many ars readers do you think don't use ad block?

Tech audiences are the worst to be advertisement dependent on.

[a4isms]

A few of the remaining newspapers I'm aware of run business awards (Best restaurant, etc), and the way to win is via wining and dining them, even though the paper claims it's based on people's votes.

Is that how it works where you are? Because over here, the best way to win an award from a publication is to advertise in that publication. Advertise enough, and you'll also become their go-to when they need a quote about anything vaguely related to your restaurant or other business, and once a year or so they'll print some hagiographic article about the amazing things going on under your leadership.

[jodrellblank]

> is not journalism by any means

It literally is journal-ism.

Wikipedia: "Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day""

Britannica: "Journalism, the collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary"

Stories from British Newspaper Archive[1]:

- June 1950 Cat in Tree in Sheffield - Sheffield Daily Telegraph

- July 1939 A cat which has sought refuge the top of a tree on Somerlayton Road, Stockwell, defied all attempts to get it down. - Sunderland Daily Echo.

- June 1956 A cat was rescued from a 60ft. oak tree by Southgate firemen at Abbotshall Avenue, Southgate. - Wood Green weekly herald.

- Ocober 1959 CAT UP TREE I was sorry to hear that your cat had been lost Frances, I hope he is none the worse for his experience up the tree, now. - Penrith Observer.

- July 1956 Cat in tree rescued. Worthing firemen rescued a cat - Worthing Herald.

- July 1955 RESCUED CAT IN TREE - Percy Kemp climbed 40ft up a tree to rescue a cat - Bradford Observer.

- November 1956 An emergency tender from the Eastbourne Fire Brigade went to the rescue of cat in a tree in Brassey-avenue, Hampden Park - Eastbourne Gazette.

- August 1953 Clifford Morton (25) climbed 120ft up a swaying fir tree to rescue a cat - Coventry Evening Telegraph.

- March 1950 Persian cat belonging to Mrs M. ___ ... heard meow-ing from a 40ft. tree in field nearby - Dundee Evening Telegraph.

- February 1950 CAT UP TREE A telescopic ladder. belonging to Birkenhead Fire Service was rushed three miles to Arrowe Park Road. Woodchurch. this afternoon. to rescue a cat which had climbed over 40 feet up a tree - Liverpool Echo

- October 1924 SHOTS AT CAT IN TREE .. It was stated that the boys saw a black Persian 'cat up a tree on the farm, and they fired at it - Daily Mirror

- July 1939 CAT IN TREE FOR TWO DAYS - Harlepool Northern Daily Mail

- August 1962 CAT IN TREE RESCUED BY FIREMEN - Lincolnshire Free PRess

- May 1956 The story of a stray cat, Mr. Budd and a 45ft, fir tree, was told at Wednesday's annual meeting of the Torquay and South-East Devon branch of the R.S.P.C.A. - Torquay Times

- etc. etc.

When was this imaginary wonderful time you're implying when newspapers were only speaking truth to power with mighty investigative reporting, and not literally a journal of things people did and said in a local area (or on a certain topic)?

[1] https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results?bas... tree&retrievecountrycounts=false

[didntknowya]

yea it's a tech news blog people are acting like it should be a peer reviewed journal or something.

[vintagedave]

Yes: in newsrooms, this is the editor's responsibility. I note the editor wasn't fired.

[crazygringo]

It's the editor's responsibility to set processes and standards to try to make sure this doesn't happen. If the rules exist but the reporter breaks them, then it's the reporter's fault and they get fired. As happened -- that's part of the process of maintaining standards. It's not the editor's fault. What exactly do you expect them to do? They can't fact-check and verify every single fact and quote in every article. They're not superhuman.

[vintagedave]

Why not? Copy-paste-google would be a sanity check for 99% of them.

[crazygringo]

Because they're busy doing the rest of their job? They don't have enough time for it, nor is it a good use of their time.

That's like asking why the CEO of a 20-person startup isn't reading every line of code for bugs. It's not the best use of their valuable time.

[vintagedave]

It's their responsibility.

It is, therefore, absolutely a good use of their time.

[lynx97]

When more and more typos started to creep into news articles of our state-owned, national news feed and people started to notice, the explanation we got was basically that the frequency of news articles is so supposedly so high that it is supposedly impossible to catch them. If news orgs can't even do as much proof reading that they catch typos and grammatical errors, I highly doubt anyone is still doing editorial checking...

[mikkupikku]

It's the editors responsibility to make sure fabricated quotes don't get published, but it's also the journalist's responsibility to not paste fabricated quotes from a chatbot into their articles. The responsibility of the former doesn't negate the responsibility of the latter.

I can't just submit shit work all day long then blame QA when some of it goes through. That's like a burglar saying it's the cops fault that people got burglared.

[gruez]

Isn't that the factchecker's job?

[tremon]

The editorial staff should have been checking too

In what world should the editor double check third-party quotes in an article submitted by a journalist? Do you think the Washington Post phones the White House every time an article quotes the president (ok, bad example, pretend I asked this question about a serious paper in a healthy democracy)?

There's also such a thing as journalistic confidentiality -- the editor may not even know the identity of the quoted source. That doesn't apply to this specific case but your claim was generic, and I think there's a serious misapprehension here if you think it's the editor's job to verify citations in journalists' writings.

[chrisjj]

> beloch 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

"I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words,” Edwards continued. He emphasized that the “text of the article was human-written by us"

... except the bit that wasn't.

Nomination for Weasel Words of the Year award.

[Hnrobert42]

I cannot disagree with you more strongly.

Ars did own up to its mistake both in writing and in firing the author. The author himself fell on his sword in detail on Bluesky.

Your only real complaint is that their published explanation wasn't subjectively good enough for you and that means it's sad to see them at this level?

[Aurornis]

> The author himself fell on his sword in detail on Bluesky.

Not exactly. He wrote a long excuse blaming being sick, sidestepping the issue that he was using AI tools to write for him and not making an effort to fact check.

Also Bluesky is not Ars Technica. It doesn’t matter what he posts on his own obscure social media page. We’re talking about the journalistic platform where he was given a wide audience.

> Your only real complaint is that their published explanation wasn't subjectively good enough for you and that means it's sad to see them at this level?

Why do you not think that’s a valid complaint? It appears they eventually did part ways, but Ars Technica has also been trying to lay as low as possible and avoid the topic in hopes that it will blow over.

[madamelic]

Maybe I don't understand journalism but this guy being a reporter, shouldn't he have had an editor reviewing his work before they hit publish? I understand trusting a senior reporter but I would think due to libel concerns, they would check people's quotes ESPECIALLY if the reporter was sick.

Honestly it seems like journalism has been in their 'vibe code' era for a decade where they just publish whatever typos and all.

This was an institutional error, not an individual reporter's fault. We should also be asking why he was still contributing when he had a high fever. Why did his editors push him to publish his work? I will certainly write code and answer questions when I am sick when I am up to it but I would never push to main while sick.

[noboostforyou]

> Maybe I don't understand journalism but this guy being a reporter, shouldn't he have had an editor reviewing his work before they hit publish?

While the journalist is still responsible for their own actions, I agree with you that this being published in the first place is indicative of a deeper failure akin to - "if a junior dev accidentally deletes your production db on their first day that's on the company itself"

[Aurornis]

> failure akin to - "if a junior dev accidentally

This person was not a junior.

He chose to use the AI tools knowing that they hallucinate.

The comparisons to an untrained junior are illogical. This person was a long time reporter who knew better.

[newswasboring]

Even a senior dev being able to unilaterally delete your prod entirely should not be possible.

But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs, its just a popular shorthand for "your process sucks".

[afavour]

Sadly this is a reality of the money disappearing from the journalism industry. You're right, there absolutely should be fact checkers. A reporter absolutely shouldn't be filing while sick. And the big news orgs still do that. But I doubt Ars has the resources.

[ValentineC]

> But I doubt Ars has the resources.

Ars is owned by Conde Nast, which is owned by Advance Publications. Ars's parents could have funded all these to ensure journalistic integrity, but would rather squeeze their staff and make money off the brand goodwill and advertising.

[eviks]

Should fact checkers have fact checkers to check the the first batch wasn't incompetent and didn't use AI to rewrite the article to add more "facts"?

[Aurornis]

The root offense wasn’t that this was published. The root problem is that the author submitted an LLM hallucination as a story. He should have faced consequences even if it had been caught.

> This was an institutional error, not an individual reporter's fault.

The person who caused the problem is at fault. It doesn’t help to do mental gymnastics to try to shift blame to a faceless institution. The author is at fault.

> We should also be asking why he was still contributing when he had a high fever. Why did his editors push him to publish his work?

I think you’re putting too much stock into the excuse. The author got caught doing one of the things you cannot do as a journalist: Publishing fake quotes. He was looking for any way to excuse it and make it not his fault so he could try to keep his job.

He made the choice. The consequences are his to bear. If it had been caught before publishing he still should have faced the consequences.

[lich_king]

It is not a job of the editor to assume that the author is lying to you.

> This was an institutional error, not an individual reporter's fault.

Ah yes, "the system made me use AI".

[barbazoo]

More akin to not having code reviews in opinion. If the process isn't there you're just not picking up certain issues.

[catlifeonmars]

The “system” should make it difficult to make mistakes.

But more importantly, why can’t both be at fault?

Having fact checkers review every articles you publish is a very low bar (as in you should not be in the business of publishing news if you can’t do it effectively).

[lich_king]

> But more importantly, why can’t both be at fault?

They can and are. But the parent literally said it's not the author's fault.

[iepathos]

If the Ars Technica editorial process requires assuming reporters don't fabricate quotes, then their process is inadequate. That's like a software company letting junior engineers release directly to production with just a spellcheck and no real process to catch errors. Major publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc. have a dedicated fact-checking department that is part of the process and needs to give the ok before any article is published. Why is their process so deficient by comparison? Why wasn't there any fact checking?

[Aurornis]

> That's like a software company letting junior engineers release directly to production

This person wasn’t a junior.

Editorial processes don’t actually check every single line of everything that is written. Journalists are trusted to report accurately. This person demonstrated they could not be trusted.

> Why wasn't there any fact checking?

Why do programmers ever let any bugs get to production if they have code review? Journalistic outlets do not fact check literally every line that is ever written before it goes to publication.

[starkparker]

As someone who worked as a newspaper copy editor for the first third of my career, "assume that the author is lying to you" was the entire job.

A lapse in that non-hypothetically left me responsible, and legally liable, in situations like this.

[madamelic]

> legally liable

I think this is the thing people are missing the most. Libel is an incredibly serious thing to do. Misstating a fact is a faux pas and a bad look but misquoting someone, especially if that article is taken as a hit piece, can cost hundreds of thousands or millions.

[lich_king]

As someone coming from a family of editors and plugged into the publishing world, I think it would be really weird if that was your job. It's not an adversarial relationship. Your job is to pressure-test the arguments and the language, not to ask every time if maybe the person submitting the article didn't really write it, or didn't really interview the person they're claiming to have interviewed.

> A lapse in that non-hypothetically left me responsible, and legally liable, in situations like this.

It didn't. At worst, it exposed the publisher. And the publisher would have the defense that they had the right policies in place and that the misconduct lies with the journalist. Unless it could be shown that you knew about potential issues and still went through with it for political or financial gain, it's a nothingburger.

[chrisjj]

> Ars did own up to its mistake both in writing

The Ars "own up" didn't even ID the article or the author.

[Gagarin1917]

They’re at this level because the editors have always had low standers.

I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like 50% of Ars headlines are completely misleading.

They’ve had this problem for years. They will publish anything that gets them clicks. They do not care if a writer makes things up. They do not care if their headlines are misleading - in fact, that’s the point. They clearly got into the job in order to influence and manipulate people.

They’re bad people, with terrible motivations, and unchecked power. They only walk back when something really really bad happens.

Never trust an Ars headline.

[3abiton]

> They’re at this level because the editors have always had low standers.

It's not just Ars Technica. I would go as far as saying the big majority. I work at the biggest alliance of public service media in EU, and my role required me to interact with editors. I often do not like painting with broad brush, but I am yet to meet a humble editor yet. They approach everything with a "I know better than anyone else" attitude. Probably the "public" aspect of the media, but I woupd argue it's editorial aspect too. The rest of the staff are often very nice and down to earth.

[mikkupikku]

> but I am yet to meet a humble editor yet. They approach everything with a "I know better than anyone else" attitude.

They're like "UX experts" in software. One does UX for software, the other does UX for text. Same attitude problems, from the way you describe it. If the expert in something so subjectively judged is seen to be conceding anything, that might undermine their perceived expertise. Any push back is interpreted as somebody challenging their career.

[pixl97]

> Any push back is interpreted as somebody challenging their career.

I mean, yes, this happens quite a bit, especially with egotistical people.

But to play devils advocate they do have to deal with a massive fuckload of bullshit asymmetry where people dumber than rocks spew forth a never ending stream of stupid crap with the authority of an LLM.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

<< They approach everything with a "I know better than anyone else" attitude.

My charitable read is that if one has to interact with the public, one naturally develops an understanding of what is wrong with it.

[g947o]

Same for the Verge. Sometimes their headline or content contains factual errors. If you point it out in the comment, sometimes they do it properly and add a correction, other times they quietly fix it and delete your comment. So much for their free speech stance and editorial practice.

[adornKey]

A few years ago I liked Ars Technica, but then somehow I think quality went down the drain. Did something happen to them a few years ago? If they get rid of the crazy reporters and go AI only - maybe the quality will improve again to a readable level.

[jodrellblank]

> "always had low standards"

Always? Or since they were bought by Conde Nast in 2008?

[tw85]

It doesn't help that the background of most Ars' writers was some variant of "former IT pro", which is almost guaranteed to mean they're unqualified to write with nuance and depth about serious technical topics. So you have guys like Jon Brodkin pumping out total nonsense about the latest wireless communications breakthroughs (just one example I remember) while 99% of the audience has no clue and won't check them on it.

[bayindirh]

> I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like 50% of Ars headlines are completely misleading.

I believe they are doing A/B testing on these.

Ah yes, I remember correctly for once: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/why-do-front-page-arti...

TL;DR: They are doing mandatory A/B testing since 2015.

[bombcar]

A/B headline testing is just scientific clickbait.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I disagree. You could A/B test two good, accurate, well-written headlines and stay clear of clickbait altogether. Sure, you're still optimising for the most popular, but "clickbait" doesn't just mean "well performing", there's also an implication of duplicity.

I have a modicum of experience here. I write for another online media company and, although we produce our own headlines, we are 'strongly encouraged' to write clickbait headlines, to the extent where we are asked to remove instances of specific product names (etc.) in order to be mysterious and not give the game away too early. (Yes, in case it wasn't clear, I hate this!)

[bombcar]

Sure, you can be above board (and perhaps they even try) but that recent “WiFi is broken wide open” headline that turned out to be something about device-to-device and not wargaming told me where their hearts lay (in being paid, understandably).

[bayindirh]

I didn't argue that it isn't?

[bombcar]

I was agreeing; anyone who admits to using A/B headline testing is just admitting to be a clickbait factory.

[pixl97]

You ever ask the question why they would want to be a clickbait factory?

Because it pays the bills, unfortunately. Google has sucked up all the advertising dollars that used to pay for media and the rest of the world is now doing card tricks to earn scraps to pay the bills.

[simianwords]

Example?

[jrmg]

Is it normal/expected for a news organization to publish that they fired someone? I’m inclined to take the ‘don’t comment on personnel matters’ at face value.

They did report on the article quote sourcing debacle at the time - perhaps not as quickly as some would’ve liked, but within a couple of days.

[bayindirh]

Yes. Normally, and Ars is generally up to that standard, the editorial staff (or Editor in Chief) updates the article, adds a note about the correction, and further adds that the original author of the article is not working with Ars anymore.

It stays as a mark, immortalizing the error, but it's a better scar than deleting and acting like it never happened.

I also want to note that, this last incident response is not typical of the Ars I'm used to.

[nerdsniper]

> this last incident response is not typical of the Ars I'm used to.

They never really announced Peter Bright leaving ArsTechnica either though. At least not until much much later.

[bayindirh]

That was a criminal case, though. The court process may have prevented them from talking about it to keep things fair.

I'm not a US citizen and IANAL, so YMMV.

[pavon]

It isn't just Dr Pizza. In recent history (perhaps since being bought by Conde Nast?), when staff left, stories from them simply stopped appearing, and questions about whether they had left or were on a break were met with crickets. The only conformation came when the bio was changed and/or they announced they were hiring or had hired the person replacing them.

At least that is what I remember with Sam Machkovech, Ron Amadeo, Cyrus Farivar, Joe Mullin, Andrew Cunningham, Casey Johnston, Jaqui Cheng. And the policy doesn't appear to be limited to people leaving on bad terms since Andrew has since returned, and Cyrus occasionally contributes freelance articles. The last time I remember them announcing a departing staff member is when Ben Kuchera left.

[crazygringo]

I don't know what you're basing that on.

It seems entirely normal and standard to retract articles and publish a note elsewhere that it was retracted. In fact, it's common because if an article had one fabrication it might have others which you haven't discovered yet, so you don't want to keep it up.

Whether they want to announce that the journalist was fired is up to their discretion. But it's not necessary or even normal.

I don't know why you're talking about a "mark", a "scar", that "immortalizes". That's weird and frankly a little disturbing. The journalist got fired and the article got taken down and a note was made by the editor. That's accountability working as intended. I don't know why you want more than that.

[bayindirh]

First, I didn't want him to be fired, frankly. I have a comment telling exactly that when this thing happened.

Second, as a reader following Ars for more than 10 (15?, IDK) years, I never seen them abruptly retract an article like this. Their modus operandi is correct and own the corrections. This is what I always said (this is the third time in a comment train).

We all have scars. From a fall, from a cut, physical, emotional, whatnot. You don't need to feel sad, or get disturbed about it. A scar is a life's way of making you remember something. If it's your own making, it makes you remember what not to do. If it's someone else's making, it's makes you remember an unfortunate event you made out alive.

Owning your mistakes by correcting an article and marking it is greater accountability than saying "this has never happened, nothing to see here, move along". I'll not comment further on firing of the author. I don't have enough information on any side, or I don't know them close enough to say anything further than I wish he didn't get fired.

[crazygringo]

But retracting an article is more serious than making a correction.

The accountability comes from the editor's note. It's there already. It's owned.

You're acting like this is some attempt to bury a mistake. It doesn't appear to be. It's what happens when you don't even have faith that the rest of the article is correct.

[jrmg]

There was nothing at the article’s URL for a day or so after it was pulled (on a holiday weekend, FWIW), which I agree isn’t great. But there is, now, a page up at the article’s original URL:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-reje...

with a locked comment leading to the Editor’s statement:

https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retractio...

I disagree with the idea that the misleading article text should remain up after a retraction.

[donohoe]

No. That can happen but it’s not the only path. An article can be retracted. That said, it’s usually noted somewhere else.

[bayindirh]

You're right, but I told about what Ars does 99.999% of the time. This is the only exception I see Ars retracts an article and buries it deep like this.

[IshKebab]

The BBC reports on itself quite well (maybe too much even). Here's an example:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly51dzw86wo

I think they're an outlier, but still I was disappointed by Ars's response. They deleted the article and didn't detail what was wrong with it at all. Felt like a cover-up.

[d1sxeyes]

To be completely fair, BBC news is effectively a different organisation which has the BBC name. There's a fairly good overview of it here: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c80l3074mgko

[kitd]

BBC News does have to report on itself from time to time. Here's it's "live" feed from November on the Parliamentary Committee investigation into the Trump speech edit incident:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cp34d5ly76lt

(edit: technically, it was Panorama. I'm not sure if that is part of the News remit or separate from it).

[rgblambda]

Panorama is technically part of News. The CEO of News resigned over the trump edit as well as the Director General. Though an independent production company (October Films) produced the documentary, they claim BBC News Panorama team had final say over the editing. The BBC doesn't seem to have ever disputed this.

[buran77]

> They deleted the article

This was a big disappointment. I read the original article and the comment from the source highlighting the error, knew what was wrong with it, and still think it was the wrong move to just delete the article and all the original comments, and replace it with an editorial note.

This is a kind of cover-up. It's impossible to hide the issue but they went to great lengths to soften the optics and remove the damning content from the public record. They obscured the magnitude of the error. It looks like another "person uses AI and gets some details wrong".

What they did so far, the decisions that allowed the issue to occur in the first place (e.g. no editorial review before publishing) and the first reaction to deal with the incident (just destroy the content, article and comments) is everything I need to know about the journalistic principles at ArsTechnica. it's a major loss of trust for me.

[g947o]

If a news organization publishes an article welcoming someone onboard, they should also do that when someone is fired because of a scandal.

Of course, if someone leaves because of personal reasons or jumping ship, there is no reason to do that. But this is different.

[donohoe]

Sorta. Usually they would do a press release or a post on their company blog - not an article.

Aside, posting about a new hire is easy and has no legal livability. Posting on a departure can be a tangled web.

I do agree that some note by Ars would be good here.

[Hnrobert42]

The complications of HR policy and law do not allow for your proposed solution.

[g947o]

I have no experience in that area, but it's hard to see how a plain, factual statement "This person is no longer with the company." can be problematic.

[pavon]

That statement by itself wouldn't warrant an article, and it would be difficult to include a statement like that in a larger article about the event, without implying more than that.

[hluska]

Republishing an article with corrected quotes is reserved for cases where an editorial team can trust the substance of an article. There is an error but that error doesn’t impact the amount of trust the editorial team has in the article.

A retraction is totally different. It means that an editorial team does not trust any of the underlying article. It’s the biggest stick in journalism and is only reserved for the absolute worst breaches of trust.

When you retract an article and then update the author’s bio to past tense, that’s as clear of a signal as you can ethically send. A publication with clout makes news and writes the first line of people’s obituaries while they’re still alive - a degree of tact, professionalism and newsworthiness comes into play.

[14]

Where I work in healthcare honestly and owning up is encouraged and unless there is major negligence not often punished. They just want to try learn why the mistake happened and look for ways to prevent it going forward. My buddy said for his company if an accident happens WorkSafe is not out to punish as long as they are very forward and honest. Again they want to learn how to avoid it happening again. Punishment only scares others to try hide mistakes.

I think they missed a big opportunity to instead of firing the guy sit him down and stress how not okay this was and that it harms the credibility and he needs to understand that and make a proper apology. They could make him do some education like ethical reporting responsibilities or whatever.

Then like you say not just hide the article but point out the mistakes and corrections. Describe the mistake and how credible reporting is their priority and the author will be given further education to avoid this happening again. They could also make new policies like going forward all articles that use AI for search results must attempt to find a source for that information. This would build trust not harm it in my opinion.

[sumeno]

If a doctor intentionally did something that they obviously know is unethical they would be fired too. This was not a "mistake", it is a huge ethical violation.

This is more like writing your buddy a prescription for drugs to take recreationally

[vintagedave]

I agree. I'd add that the fact he appeared to be working while sick -- and that he pre-emptively and immediately publicly apologised -- means I think he already did behave as he should.

This makes me question Ars not him. Loss of credibility indeed.

[ChrisSD]

> Aurich Lawson of Ars Technica deleted the original article

That's a very "shoot the messenger" statement. While Aurich is the community "face" of Ars, I very much doubt he has the power to do anything like that.

[bombcar]

Iirc he manages the CMS, he might literally be the only person with the power. Authority is something else.

[kergonath]

Ars never commented about firing staff before, and it happened on several occasions. You get the occasional article when someone joins, never when someone leaves. They should have published another article after all this, but I would not expect them to comment about staff.

[anakaine]

And I think thats a good thing. People screw up, and journalists are people. This person's punishment for their screw up was losing their job. They do not need to be dragged into a hit piece.

Ars can, and probably should if they have not already, publish a piece about hallucinations and use of AI in journalism, and own up to their own lack of appropriate controls and reflections. They do not need to drag the authors name into the write up. It can be self critical of themselves as a journalistic outlet.

[g947o]

Nobody needs to publish a hit piece.

Ars could have just said "After investigation, we reviewed our editorial process. The author of the article is no longer with the company." factually and objectively.

I can't see how this could possibly be a negative or harmful thing.

[rob_c]

> It’s sad to see Ars Technica at this level.

This was from a journalist _who_is_hired_as_expert_ at knowing of/about tooling that hallucinates (LLM ((AI)) chatbots). Decides to implicitly trust said technology to write a "hit piece" (lets be honest it was).

In several territories that would fall under slander and if is untrue is a major journalistic mis-step and career ending faux-pas.

Why in any situation would their position now be defendable?

This is akin to being a journalist of iron-mongering writing a "truth" piece on how "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" (if you don't get my reference here, lucky you). It's outright un-professional.

Blaming it on illness allows everyone to save face, but they were compos mentis enough to hit publish at the time. That itself carries a certain "I'm well enough to agree this is a good article" from said author.

[vor_]

I wouldn't characterize the story as a hit piece; the misquotes didn't distort his position. What happened is the LLM accurately summarized his position, but they weren't actually his words in the quotes.

[vpribish]

This has just happened - i'm giving Ars a bit more time to come out with a piece examining the situation. They're a pretty good operation, I think. but it they don't...

[jmbwell]

This. The truth is still putting on its shoes and all that

[smallerize]

There's no point trying to update an article with fake sources. If you can't trust the material, there's no story. I think pulling it was the right move here.

[elAhmo]

> There’s something to be said about the value of owning up to issues and being forthright with actions and consequences.

Exactly! The situation happened, no going back, but they had a choice - to be transparent about it and I am sure people would be appreciative of it, maybe giving them net positive rather than negative, but the choice they have made is a complete opposite and a sign that no one should trust them.

[smallerize]

Ars isn't winging it here, they are following Conde Nast HR processes. https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/editor%E2%80%99s-note-... "I can confirm that the HR processes are intricate and complicated. I can confirm that we have union writers. I can confirm these things take time." -Aurich

[tw85]

I wonder if it has something to do with an incident years ago in which one of Ars' senior reporters (Peter Bright) was arrested and convicted for child enticement. Ars eventually allowed one of their readers to write a forum article about it, but they didn't write one themselves at the time. Some people defended this course of non-action by saying it was the sensible thing to do because his colleagues could become witnesses in the trial.

[petterroea]

It seemed to me like very hasty self defense, there's a lot of AI slop hate and Ars can't risk becoming known as slop when their readers are probably prone to be aware of the issue.

I don't think Ars thought they had a choice but to cut off the journalist who made the mistake, especially when it was regarding a very touchy subject. I don't think they had a choice, it's impossible for us readers to know if this was a single lapse of judgement or a bad habit. Regardless, the communication should have been better.

[esperent]

All they had to do was write a clear and simple message saying that one of their staff was responsible, has been fired, and they'll take steps to avoid this in future.

Their actions so far just make me think they're panicking and found a scapegoat to blame it on, but they're not going to put any new checks in place so it'll just happen again.

[DetroitThrow]

It was against their policy to use AI in producing any part of the final article, and the writer was aware of that.

I feel bad for the guy, but there's just no way I can imagine much better safeguards other than editors paying more close attention to referencing sources, and hiring more reliable people.

[autoexec]

> It was against their policy to use AI in producing any part of the final article, and the writer was aware of that.

More than that, as a reporter on AI he should have been fully aware that AI frequently bullshits and lies. He should have known it was not reliable and that its output needs to be carefully verified by a human if you care at all about the accuracy or quality of what it gives you. His excuse that this was done in a fever induced state of madness feels weak when it was his whole job to know that AI was not an appropriate tool for the task.

[Barbing]

>his whole job

Possibly akin to a roofer taking a shortcut up there, then taking a spill? You knew better but unfortunately let the fact that you could probably get away with it with zero impact decide for you.

IIRC hallucinations were essentially kicked off initially by user error, or rather… let’s say at least: a journalist using the best available technologies should have been able to reduce the chance of this big of an issue to near zero, even with language models in the loop & without human review.

(e.g. imagine Karpathy’s llm-council with extra harnessing/scripting, so even MORE expensive, but still. Or some RegEx!)

[true_religion]

Alternatively… there was no AI error, the reporter made up the quotes, and lied when they were challenged.

[tonyedgecombe]

You have to give them time to do the job properly as well. Companies will often pay lip service to standards then squeeze their staff so much those standards are impossible to attain.

[esperent]

Yes, those are exactly the kind of steps they would need to publicly commit to in order to retain trust. And yet, instead we get silence, no acceptance that some measure of responsibility falls on the editorial team here. So it's clear they just hope it'll blow over without them having to do anything, which is the opposite of what a trustworthy site would do.

[gertop]

AnonC doesn't seem to be upset that the journalist was fired. The disappointment comes from Ars trying to brush this entire situation away by deleting articles, comments, and making no statement on their website.

[petterroea]

My understanding is that AnonC is upset at Ars not taking the mature approach by allowing this to become a learning moment for the employee and using it to double down and confirm their stance on AI generated content. There's strength in maturity. But I am doing some reading between the lines, and I'm possibly reading a bit too much into "There’s something to be said about the value of owning up to issues"

Reminds me of a story I was told as an intern deploying infra changes to prod for the first time. Some guy had accidentally caused hours of downtime, and was expecting to be fired, only for his boss to say "Those hours of downtime is the price we pay to train our staff (you) to be careful. If we fire you, we throw the investment out the window"

[lynx97]

There is a difference between an error and totally misunderstand your actual task. I have absolutely no sympathy for journalists getting caught producing hallucinated articles. Thats an absolute no go, and should always result in that person being fired.

[jcgrillo]

Same goes for engineers reviewing vibeslop. If you let that shit through code review, and a customer impacting outage results, that should be instant termination. But it won't be, because as an engineer you are supposed to be held "blameless" right?

[pixl97]

Hence why software engineers aren't an actual professional licensed engineers.

[mikkupikku]

I love vibe coding but you are absolutely right. We're at the stage where vibe coding is a fun way to produce sloppy software and that's fine if the intended user is just yourself and you're fully informed about what you're getting into. But actually shipping vibe coded slop to other people is wacky, anybody doing the needs to be manually reviewing every commit very carefully and needs to be prepared to accept personal responsibility for anything that slips by.

[watwut]

Joirnalist job was not to review ai-slop. That is rather crucial difference.

[watwut]

Accidentally taking down production should not lead to firing. It should lead to improved process

Making up quotes for article, with technology or not, should lead to firing.

[oneeyedpigeon]

"should lead to firing..."

... and, also, improved processes. There should be no way an individual writer can damage the brand to this extent with absolutely no checks or oversight. This was just an error, but a bad actor could've put something far, far worse out there.

Even an automated quote-checker might have helped in this case.

[jcgrillo]

Fact checking is a vital part of the editorial process and clearly that process failed here. Tech people often have a double standard when it comes to journalism--rules for thee but not for me. However the structure is fairly analogous, in that both professions ship under lots of time pressure where mistakes can be costly. I'm not sure, honestly, who is most at fault here or why only the reporter was terminated. But my comment above was to highlight that there shouldn't be a double standard--if you think a journalist should be fired for this kind of error it would be inconsistent to believe a software engineer shouldn't.

[bandrami]

"Make sure quotes in your article are things the subject actually said to you" is not something that should need a "learning moment".

[jmbwell]

I note that Ken Fisher did post an editor’s note, Benj did publicly own up to it, and all of this was mentioned in the article.

[radiohead89]

> It’s sad to see Ars Technica at this level.

They had to do this. You have to have journalistic integrity above all.

[calyth2018]

Conde Nasty corrupts eveything.

[dust-jacket]

I absolutely disagree.

This has been done very professionally. They pulled the article. They handled the personnel matter. They didn't try to pretend it hasn't happened.

Why are people here acting like retracting an article is an attempt to hide something. They literally replaced the whole text with a note from the editor saying "this article was bad".

[chrisjj]

> Why are people here acting like retracting an article is an attempt to hide something.

Because the retraction notice hid the article name and the author name?

[didntknowya]

why should ars technica have to publish grovelling apologies to satisfy their readers. it's not a tabloid.

and as it's obviously a HR issue both parties are restricted to what they can say, if they want to provide more details on their personal feeds and people are interested they can find out respectively.

[zombot]

Yep, Ars Technica is off my reading list. They completely lost my trust.

[carabiner]

It's cuz Ars's roots are in being video game bloggers and graphics card reviewers, not legitimate journalists. They don't have a notion of professionalism or journalistic duty, only virality and juicy takes.

[vintagedave]

I'm sad to see them fire him. I've seen far worse: I have always approached issues by asking for accountability and improvement. Frankly, he already did: he openly apologised. I was very happy with that, it demonstrated integrity and I remained respecting him.

Even worse,

> I have been sick in bed with a high fever and unable to reliably address it (still am sick) [0]

In an earlier HN thread, I saw someone ask why Ars was requiring staff work while ill. If that's true, if he posted without verification while sick and under pressure, which is implied and plausible, firing looks doubly bad.

Ars has lost a lot of my trust in recent years, with articles seeming far worse. Just like you, I'm sorry to see the editorial position here.

[0] https://bsky.app/profile/virtuistic.bsky.social/post/3mey2mq...

[mikkupikku]

You're taking his fever dream excuse at face value, and I think you probably shouldn't. It reads like a lame excuse to deflect personal responsibility, a cynical face-saving tactic.

If the illness was genuine, can he document that he advised management of this fever and they told him to submit an article anyway? It's not his bosses job to stick a thermometer up his ass every morning.

[vintagedave]

> You're taking his fever dream excuse at face value

Being sick with a bad fever is awful, it's a nightmare, and I cannot imagine making good decisions at the time.

I do not know if he was ordered to work while sick, but there are often implicit expectations in workplaces and this was a time-sensitive article.

[asadotzler]

>I do not know if he was ordered to work while sick

You don't know if they were even sick at all. In fact, when someone gets fired for cause, it's quite common for them to lie about the circumstances. That you take their comments at full value seems kinda naive.

[vintagedave]

No, but I think it's worth behaving with grace and kindness. If he claims that is the case, let's assume he is being honest. His other actions, such as proactively admitting fault, speak to honesty.

The statement also predated being fired, so far as we know the timeline.

[seethishat]

I agree. In my experience, no one cares when you are sick. No one. Maybe your mom, but that's it. Using it as an excuse when you make a mistake is even worse. People value responsibility... "Sorry, my bad, won't happen again", not excuses.

[bmurphy1976]

He posted his not very impressive apology as images not text that is easily indexed. I do think that was purposeful and manipulative and very much makes me question his motivation. If I'm missing the original posting in text I'd sure like to know so I can correct this perception.

[vintagedave]

In fairness, people often do this in order to have a full statement visible, not a portion, not spread over multiple posts, etc.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I just caution that jumping to 'purposeful' (re not easily indexed), 'manipulative' etc is a very strong leap.

I also found the post by searching for a quote from it, so I think images with text likely are indexed. I can't imagine in 2026 they wouldn't be.

[WarmWash]

Ars has probably the most rabid anti-AI audience of all the tech publications

[dust-jacket]

Nah, The Register is far more strongly anti-AI. Mention AI and systemd in the same article and watch them froth

[xnx]

Ars is not journalism. It's scraped content to put between ads.

[mmmpetrichor]

I disagree strongly. I've found that they have more journalistic integrity than most mainstream news pages. Did you see the extremely strong post from the senior editor after this AI hallucination was discovered in a published story? And then the reporter was dismissed.

[vasco]

They're a random tech blog, the kind of website that is peak time waste slop, why would they have any standards? Even the new york times and the Washington post put up wrong things all the time without corrections. People need to realize journalists are just ad sellers, not some beacon of truth. They are there to sell ads, the same way a youtube video of a guy eating too much food in front of a camera is.

Journalism has devolved into content creation in the literal sense of the word, they are just there to put something inside the div with the id "content", to justify the ads around it.

[lukan]

"People need to realize journalists are just ad sellers, not some beacon of truth."

You just changed the meaning of journalist. Now sure, the job of some journalists could be better described as ad sellers, but I rather call those like that and restrict the original term to actual journalists who actually care about truth. Because they still exist.

[vasco]

The 3 people that work at Reuters actually doing journalism are not doing in ANY way a similar job to the millions writing blog posts for Ars Technica like publications. The latter is an ad seller indeed. And the majority of publications that are renowned also do little to no journalism.

It's as if we called "web devs" that learned JS on udemy and just vibe code, Computer Scientists and treated them as if they publish compiler research papers. It's just a completely different job

[lukan]

Eric Berger at Ars for instance is someone I consider a journalist. Have you proof, that he systematically neglects truth in favor of ad selling?

[mikkupikku]

Berger is a real one. I'm surprised he's lasted so long at Ars Technica. I think eventually his objective reporting of SpaceX will get the Are Technica reader base to demand his firing, Ars readers are very reddit-like. Team minded, not interested I hearing dispassionate takes. Hearing Elon Musk criticized as a person while simultaneously seeing SpaceX described as a real and highly accomplished company gives reddit/ars readers tonal whiplash, such people prefer simple narratives without nuance.

See also, in this very thread, somebody who thinks Berger has a strong pro-musk bias because his reporting and books say that SpaceX are good at what they do.

[lukan]

"Ars readers are very reddit-like"

How can you know? I think you mean most reddit commentors are very reddit like (nowdays I tend to agree). I read Ars from time to time, but I never commented there. But still, when I read comments, I don't get the impression that Berger is close of getting fired.

[vasco]

If I say "plumbers are not electricians" will you also pick a plumber by name and make claims about him for me to refute? None of the points you ask about were made in the comment you replied to.

[doctorpangloss]

you're participating in a social media site where something like 20% of the articles have become, "I told Claude Code to do something and write this article about it." So put your money where your mouth is, if you think it's sad, if this is more than concern trolling, hit Ctrl+W.