Debate on ethics and ‘artificial intelligence’ is urgent

THE NUJ SHOULD urgently debate the consequences for journalism of artificial intelligence, a union webinar has been told. The Ethics Council should trigger the debate with a view to possibly amending the Code of Professional Conduct.

The Council organised the online session to talk about the importance of the Code, which is part of the union's rules, and discuss its future. More than 60 members took part.

Joyce McMillan, a former member of the NUJ National Executive, now chair of Edinburgh Freelance Branch, said that the council should sponsor a debate on fake material - possibly adding a clause to the Code - based on "the issue that photographers are raising all the time about the manipulation of images".

Bristol photographer Simon Chapman said all AI-generated material should be labelled. "AI is changing things very fast and we have got to keep up", he said.

Joyce McMillan also said the Code should be amended to cover the way the mainstream media set the agenda on major stories that other journalists had to follow. She cited the "small boats" angle that dominated reporting migration - although it was "only a tiny proportion of what is happening. This is the kind of issue which is making a lot of groups in our society very disillusioned with mainstream media".

But Ethics Council chair Professor Christ Frost cautioned that he was "a little nervous about changing the code too easily".

The webinar heard from the former journalist and Labour MP Chris Mullin, a London Freelance Branch member and champion of the Code of Conduct - who in 2022 defied a court order to identify a confidential source. The case arose from a series of spectacular stories in the 1990s, which proved that the six men jailed for the IRA bombing in Birmingham in 1974 were innocent - which Chris Mullin proved by tracking down the real culprits. To nail the story he had to promise never to publish their names.

Police made no serious attempt to bring them to justice until 25 years later - when they ordered Chris Mullin to break his pledge and had over his material. He refused and, with the backing of the NUJ, won the case as an Old Bailey judge overturned the order.

© Tim Gopsill

NUJ Code of Conduct

Chris Mullin protects his sources at Branch, Apr 2022

Restrictions on reporting Chris Frost at Branch, Nov 2021

'Artificial Intelligence' our coverage to date