Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said.
No John Adams they, Portland Press Herald editors are now embarking on a fact-checking mission.
Speaking of barking, when Press Herald managers went on the radio recently to trumpet claims they’re increasing coverage, who checked them into the boards?
The Maine Wire, that’s who.
So now the state’s largest paper is using a well-known platform that sometimes uses “artificial intelligence” (AI) to “fact-check” the internet?
In fact (pun intended) the skepticism over the paper’s new fact-checking gumshoes first broke out into the open on Reddit.
The Press Herald editor in charge of the fact police quickly took to Reddit to insist that the paper is not using Gigafact’s AI-parsing tool to do its work.
But Redditors are skeptical.
“I wanted to praise the idea. But before I can sign on to cheer this I need to know if AI assisted in this in any way at all,” said Redditor u/geomathMEW.
Redditor u/Composed_Cicada2428 claims to have no doubt what the Press Herald is doing. “It’s AI,” he declared.
Yet Alex McCann, the paper’s chief of the fact force, steadfastly denied he’s using AI to help Americans get their facts straight.
“We are not using AI for it in any way,” he promised. “Gigafact does offer an AI-powered ‘parser’ tool, but we are not using it for this project (or, to my knowledge, any project).”
“The reality is much more boring: writer J. Craig Anderson and myself, along with humans from Gigafact’s team, are scouring social media for claims that we think can be fact-checked and definitively answered ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ No AI is being used,” McCann added.
Gigafact’s own website has a link to “Gigafact AI tools,” but clicking on that link gets you this: “404 Error. Page not found.” (Maybe they heard we were fact-checking them.)
“Gigafact builds AI tools to support reporting and fact-checking,” its website says. “Our tools are used by newsrooms across the U.S.”
Anderson, among its new practitioners, is a former Press Herald staffer now writing for the Harpswell Anchor but working part-time for his erstwhile employer to help get just the facts ma’am.
Fact check: The Press Herald, which recently laid off nearly 50 staffers – and jettisoned its freelancers – is now using a new freelancer to help check facts.
That’s a fact.
Redditor u/geomathMEW, who said one of the fact-checking links on Reddit didn’t connect to the subject at hand, finds the whole process “a bit clunky.”
GeomathMEW’s advice for Maine’s self-appointed fact-checking team: “Ditch Gigafact.”
