By DR. KAYLENE ARMSTRONG
Adviser
In a recent media law and ethics class, students watched the movie “Shattered Glass,” a 2003 drama based on the true story of journalist Stephen Glass.
Glass scandalized the world of journalism in 1998 when editors discovered he had fabricated, at least to some extent, the contents of two-thirds of the 41 stories he wrote for The New Republic, a magazine founded in 1914 that focuses on U.S. politics, news, culture and the arts.
The movie includes a scene near the end in which the editor looks over all the magazines covers and realizes so much was false.
We are reliving such a scene at the Northwestern News this week when it was brought to our attention that artificial intelligence was used in the writing of many opinion pieces in the last few weeks.
The Northwestern News has never approved of the use of AI in creating stories. Putting one’s name as author on any work created by another person — or, in this case, technology — is quite simply plagiarism, an act no professor condones.
Neither does this newspaper.
As the adviser, I have taken what I believe to be appropriate steps to keep the problem from happening again, including serious counseling with the person responsible.
I am not naming the individual here because I believe that college is the place for budding journalists to make their mistakes before they enter the “real world” where these same actions could cost them their job at the very least and possibly their entire career.
This individual has assured me no AI will be used in future work.
The items partially or wholly generated by AI will be modified online (https://northwesternnews.rangerpulse.com/) with an editor’s note as follows: “The following story has been modified from its original form. Artificial intelligence was used in the creation of this piece and was not the sole work of the author, whose name has been removed. The Northwestern News does not condone the use of AI in the writing of any material that appears in this publication.”
The opinion items affected include the following eight pieces: “Trump attempts to end war,” “Any team can make it to Final Four,” “Google: DOJ must rethink changes,” “Canada vs USA, tariff war,” “Southwest ends free checked bag policy,” “Female athletes required to take DNA test,” “Merchants face storms of boycott” and “New AI technology could transform internet.”
More training has already been given to the staff to make sure this problem does not arise again in any other area of the paper.
The staff members continue in their commitment to provide the most accurate human-generated coverage possible to the campus community.
BTW, the library has a DVD copy of “Shattered Glass” that you can check out.
AI POLICY
Any people, whether writers or editors, should not have another person or entity do the writing of any work submitted for use in the Northwestern News and then claim it as their own. This includes hiring a person or a company to write assignments and using artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to accomplish the same end.
Using AI to rewrite sentences (anything beyond punctuation and spelling correction) is inappropriate use.
At this time, the only appropriate use of AI would be to research ideas or topics.
Example: Ask AI for five excuses students give for turning in assignments late. Once AI provides data, explore the responses with further research. HOWEVER, the story generated from these ideas must be the writer’s own and not that of the AI program.
Any other use of AI is inappropriate and can result in firing (paid staff) or failing (class participants such as news reporting).
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