[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".

[Aurornis]

> But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs

Junior was said specifically.

A better analogy would be if one of your staff engineers decided to connect OpenClaw to his workspace and it found a way to delete the production DB.

The author was an AI reporter. You can’t argue that he didn’t know what he was doing when he made these choices. Any comparisons involved junior devs are just dishonest.

[noboostforyou]

I was using a common "phrase" that highlights individual human error vs systemic failures

Since you are stuck on the semantics allow me to rephrase - "if a single developer is able to delete your entire production db, that's an org failure"

[mikkupikku]

Specifying a junior dev on his first day is a plain deliberate rhetorical ploy to frame systemic blame as more legitimate than individual blame. If not, then why not make it a senior developer? Anybody can fuck something up, but we give special consideration to noobs who make noob mistakes, and that's what is being implicitly appealed to, illegitimately. This journalist wasn't a noob, and using ChatGPT to write his article was an error in judgement but not an actual mistake.

[newswasboring]

> Junior was said specifically.

Yes, but I think you are taking this phrase more literally than its meant to be read.

[Aurornis]

I don’t think so. Junior was a key designator in the claim and words have meanings. It would have been easier to leave it out if they didn’t intend for it to contribute meaning.

I think this is turning into a Motte and Bailey argument where the junior dev story is used to push the argument and then it’s backpedaled out when others identify the fallacy.

[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.

[mikkupikku]

I agree completely, the people who are acting like it's Ars' responsibility to assume every sentence from their journalists are lies just aren't being realistic.

And even if Ars editors had caught the fabricated quote, what then? Obviously he should still be fired. Ars could probably benifit from better editors but even so this doesn't absolve the journalist of any of his own blame, for being the one responsible for introducing these fabrications in the first place.

[greedo]

But they generally (or at least they did when I was in the biz) fact check quotes. It only takes a few minutes to fire off an email.

[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.

[starkparker]

> 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

It doesn't have to be adversarial. The things you're describing as part of the job are the things I did to prove that the reporter was doing their job. So was building a relationship with reporters that shared the load of documenting what's verified and how it's verified, so we could both trust that we were each doing our jobs correctly.

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

> It didn't.

Aside from the bald-faced arrogance of telling me what did or didn't happen to me, my lawyer, their lawyer, and my publisher's lawyer all sure didn't agree with you. Fortunately for me, you weren't involved in it.