I’m not taking all the credit but I do hope those people who didn’t believe me in the past could rightfully take this comment, print it, pull down their pants and shove it up their ass.

It’s time to hold journalism with a higher standard and this idea that “well they do alright” and “it was only once” is bullshit sliding into madness.

Just the facts, folks.

and “it was only once” is bullshit

They checked and then fired the author. I don’t see how this is “it was only once” implying nothing changed and it will happen again. Isn’t firing the author “holding journalism to a higher standard” already, which you ask for?

Maybe they should do more than just fire a person who was caught using AI. Maybe they should establish a process of independent fact checking before publication, regardless of whether AI was known or intended to be used to produce the article. It is a problem that AI was used in a way that introduced factual errors. It’s fair that the person responsible for this was fired. But all processes need quality control. Why hasn’t the person who failed to wrap quality control processes around the author fired?

in what world would independent fact checking down to the level of individual quotes be feasible for an online magazine? you can’t be serious.

That used to be the standard…

I highly doubt that. how would that even work? a third-party to the publisher would have to check every statement before the issue goes to print. I can’t imagine this happening for anything that is not research papers or official reports.

but I happy to learn something new.

This can and should be done internally. Why would it need to be a third party? Any publisher that cares about their reputation anyway. Fact-checkers are a real thing. They routinely follow up on interviews to make sure authors aren’t bullshitting.