The two biggest newspaper publishers in Australia are less strict, Nine doesn’t prohibit AI but does prohibit it being used in the writing of copy, while News Corp requires the oversight of an editorial manager. Jo Tarnawsky confirmed to us she has indeed been using AI, not to generate her essays from scratch but to assist her along the way, and explained she had not known about Crikey’s tough AI policy before filing to the publication. She also said: I get there's AI slop and photos that are completely fake. I'm offended that I'm now being accused of this type of conduct when I was using it to check and refine my work … There are reasonable, ethical uses of AI tools. The answer is to acknowledge this and … not to pretend it doesn't exist … - Email, Jo Tarnawsky, Author, 20 Mar 2026 As it turns out, Jo Tarnawsky is no Robinson Crusoe—this study from the Thomson Reuters Foundation suggesting as many as eight out of every ten journalists in some regions use AI in their work. And, notwithstanding her ill-advised reliance on the machine, it seems patently obvious Crikey’s hardline position is really not sustainable. Conceding in an email to us, it is indeed having trouble holding back the tide. But these tools, while revolutionary, are also perilous no matter how much they weasel their way into our lives, and journalists above all others perhaps must be vigilant to the risks they pose to the foundations of good reporting, independent research, clear thinking, and above all else, words on the page that actually make sense.
The more I think about it, the more I hate @lintonbesser.bsky.social's implication here that allowing machine-generated plagiarism and fabrications in media+opinion is somehow "inevitable"
Frankly, it seems to go against the entire existence of media watch?
www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/e...
