A curious video starring “CBS Mornings” host Gayle King began spreading on social media last month. In it, King expressed surprise that her weight loss had sparked so many questions and offered to share her secret with those who messaged her.
Except it wasn’t really King.
A scammer used artificial intelligence to alter a video in which King promoted her radio show. King reshared the video to her Instagram account with a note. “They’ve manipulated my voice and video to make it seem like I’m promoting it,” she wrote. “I’ve never heard of this product or used it! Please don’t be fooled by these AI videos…”
On Thursday, Forbes published an article by Alexandra S. Levine that explores more cases of altered or AI-generated videos of news anchors and reporters (Stuart A. Thompson and Sapna Maheshwari also wrote about the topic for The New York Times). Such videos have included a wide variety of journalists, including King, CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward, CBS News anchor Anne-Marie Green, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and CBS “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan.
“In many cases, these made-up segments featuring real-life broadcasters are drawing more eyeballs than legitimate clips posted on news organizations’ blue-check social media accounts,” Levine writes, noting that a recent altered video of Brennan got more than 300,000 likes on TikTok, while the most popular “Face the Nation” TikTok video that day had just 7,000 likes.
Still, Alex Mahadevan, director of MediaWise at Poynter, told me that videos altered with AI haven’t yet reached a level of large-scale, harmful misinformation — a relieving if fading reality that he first wrote about in March.
Machine-generated images or videos that change faces, bodies or voices, or otherwise make people appear to do and say things that they never did or said are called deepfakes.
Mahadevan remains more worried about cheapfakes: low-effort misinformation such as videos or photos with misleading captions, old images presented as current, cherry-picked clips from real videos rearranged into a false narrative and other such manipulations.
He notes that the Forbes article specifically mentions the CNN clip of Clarissa Ward.
“That was not an audio deepfake. It was a cheapfake,” Mahadevan said. “It doesn’t matter how sophisticated AI gets, the cheapest of cheapfakes always seem to fool the most people. So the danger doesn’t lie in the technology’s advancement. I’d be more concerned about the liar’s dividend: A politician claiming a real video or audio recording is actually a deepfake.”
Why, then, have people manipulated videos of Anderson Cooper to make him seem cowed by Donald Trump, or Anne-Marie Green to fall prey to a series of crass jokes about school shootings?
“I can’t say for sure,” Mahadevan said, “but I’d bet most people sharing deepfakes are, in fact, doing it for the lols.”
By Ren LaForme, managing editor
Watch your mouth
Philadelphia Phillies’ Bryce Harper looks down the bench in the dugout during a baseball game against the Chicago Cubs Thursday, June 29, 2023, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Something came up this week during the Major League Baseball playoffs that raised some interesting questions. Game 2 of the series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves ended when the Phillies’ Bryce Harper was doubled off first base after a great defensive play by the Braves. After the game, Braves shortstop Orlando Arcia, in plain sight of the media, chanted, “Attaboy Harper … attaboy Harper.”
Harper apparently heard about being mocked by Arcia because, to repeat, Arcia said what he said in front of reporters.
So, in Game 3, Harper hit two home runs and, both times, stared down Arcia as he passed the shortstop while rounding the bases. After the game, Harper admitted that, yeah, he made a point of staring at Arcia.
But now some of the Braves — and even some in the media — are complaining about Arcia’s comments getting back to Harper. Arcia himself, through an interpreter, told reporters, “He wasn’t supposed to hear it. That’s why we were talking in the clubhouse. … When you’re in the clubhouse, I’m under the impression you can say whatever you wanted. I guess it was something that was reported.”
Arcia’s teammate, Braves catcher Travis d’Arnaud, said, “The clubhouse is a sanctuary and I think when things like that get out, it doesn’t make people want to talk to the media. It affects the people who have been great to us all year. It is what it is.”
One Atlanta TV news reporter tweeted, “Will send sound out but the bottom line regarding the Orlando Arcia quote: He, along with many other Braves players, did not know what was being said in the locker room at that time was on the record. The media and players have a trust about what is on the record and what is not. Whoever this person is, did in fact violate that trust.”
But Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Mike Sielski retweeted the tweet and wrote, “I’m sorry, but this is just wrong. Reporters were in the clubhouse at a time designed for reporters to be in the clubhouse. In such situations, EVERYTHING is presumed to be on the record unless an individual & reporter agree *between themselves* to go off the record.”
Sielski is 100% right here. If a player says or does something in plain view of the media, the media has every right to report on it. And Arcia surely was fully aware that the media were in the room. There was no expectation of anything being off the record. To suggest the media is breaking some sort of code here or being unethical is absolutely absurd.
On his radio show, ESPN’s Mike Greenberg talked about d’Arnaud’s comments and said, “I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve heard a lot of people say a lot of stupid things in my day, but I’m not sure how much more ridiculous things you can say than that.”
Greenberg then turned sarcastic, saying, “You know, it’s really awful that the media informed the public of something that happened in full view of everyone. If you were to look up the dictionary definition of the media, it is telling the people what happened. That’s their job. Plus, he said it literally in front of everyone. … The whole world saw it and heard it.”
Maybe d’Arnaud should be more bothered that his teammate said something to fire up Harper than at a reporter for reporting on it.
Defector co-owner Kelsey McKinney summed it up when she tweeted, “As a reporter, it’s literally so funny for the Atlanta clubhouse to claim that Arcia’s comments were meant to be private. Like sweetie, you KNOW what reporters do and when they are nearby.”
By Tom Jones, senior media writer
Gannett’s Reviewed staff extend strike
Unionized staff at Gannett’s product reviews site, Reviewed, extended their strike a second day Wednesday because the company did not meet their demands.
More than 40 editorial and lab and operations workers walked off the job Tuesday during the start of Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Day event. Though they have been unionized for more than six months, Gannett has not given them concrete dates to begin contract negotiations. The workers were also protesting the company’s decision to eliminate overtime opportunities for hourly employees.
On the first day of the strike, Reviewed had just 35% of its pageviews from last year’s Prime Day, said Asya Pikovsky, a spokesperson for the Gannett units within the NewsGuild of New York. As part of their work stoppage, Reviewed journalists asked readers not to click on any links to the site’s Prime Day coverage. The event, along with other major shopping holidays like Black Friday, is one of Reviewed’s biggest revenue drivers.
By Angela Fu, media business reporter
Sports to sports business
Some of the biggest names from the dismantled New York Times sports department are moving over to something called the Sports Business Pod at the Times. As you recall, the Times over the summer decided to shut down what had been its sports department and turned over its sports coverage to The Athletic, the sports website the Times bought for $550 million at the start of 2022. The Athletic is now a part of the Times and many Athletic stories now run on the Times’ website and in the print edition of the paper.
The Times announced Thursday that Ken Belson, Joe Drape, Kevin Draper, Tania Ganguli and Jenny Vrentas will “ambitiously examine the power, economics, institutions and personalities that drive the big-money world of sports, among other topics.”
Belson and Vrentas focused mostly on the NFL in the Times’ sports department. Drape covered a variety of topics and was the Times’ horse racing expert. Draper has concentrated on sports media and business. And Ganguli mostly covered the NBA.
By Tom Jones, senior media writer
Media tidbits and links for your weekend review
- President Joe Biden will be on Sunday’s “60 Minutes” on CBS. He will be interviewed by correspondent Scott Pelley and is expected to talk about the situations in Israel, Gaza and Ukraine.
- Intense footage of Fox News reporter Trey Yingst reporting from the site of the music festival massacre in Israel when Israeli soldiers tracked down and caught someone described as a Palestinian militant.
- The Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating all reports of journalists who are killed, injured, detained or missing in the Israel-Gaza war.
- This year’s New York Times DealBook summit, hosted by columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, will include interviews with Vice President Kamala Harris, former House Kevin McCarthy, Elon Musk, Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, television creator Shonda Rhimes and more. The summit will take place at the Lincoln Center in New York City on Nov. 29.
- The Associated Press’ David Bauder with “While the news industry struggles, college students are supplying some memorable journalism.”
- Semafor’s Liz Hoffman with “AMC’s CEO shared sexually explicit photos and texts in blackmail plot.”
- New York Post sports media columnist Andrew Marchand with “Pat McAfee pays Aaron Rodgers millions for his exclusive interviews.”
More resources for journalists
- Subscribe to Poynter’s Friday newsletter, Open Tabs with Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme, and get behind-the-scenes stories only available to subscribers.
- Poynter ACES Introductory Certificate in Editing (Online) — Enroll now.
- How to Improve Your Coverage of LGBTQ+ Communities (Webinar) — Start anytime.
- Lead With Influence (Nov. 6-27) (Online seminar) — Apply by Oct. 13.
Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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