Lee Enterprises, the owner of The Daily News, is refusing to guarantee its reporters protections against the misuse of artificial intelligence tools or commit to not publishing deepfakes.
The Longview NewsGuild has been in collective bargaining with the company since July. When the NewsGuild proposed contract language that would ban deepfakes and ensure reporting work continues to be done by human reporters, Lee Enterprises refused, saying that it needed to maintain flexibility to change its rules on Al in the future.
The company wants reporters to rely solely on its internal Al policy to protect them against the same misuses of generative Al seen in companies like McClatchy and Gannett, despite Lee representatives stating the policy is expected to change.
Lee Enterprises already uses generative Al to reword articles, and encourages employees to use ChatGPT to develop ideas, write headlines and summarize information. Recently issued performance goals required reporters at The Daily News to use company-approved Al tools.
We at the NewsGuild believe Al is not a replacement for the work of real journalists in the communities they serve.
The Longview NewsGuild is asking Lee Enterprises to give reporters control over how or if generative Al tools are used in the newsroom, and to draw a hard line against deepfakes, because readers deserve news they can trust.
About the Pacific Northwest NewsGuild
The Longview NewsGuild, established in 2021, represents the reporters at The Daily News in Longview, Washington, and is a unit of the Pacific Northwest NewsGuild.
The Pacific Northwest NewsGuild, TNG-CWA Local #37082, represents more than 350 workers in Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Idaho. For almost 90 years, its journalists and media workers have been fighting for fair wages and benefits, sustainable jobs and the resources they need to help tell the stories of our communities.
Across the nation, unionized newsrooms are pushing to implement protections from artificial intelligence in their contracts. The NewsGuild-Communication Workers of America, which represents nearly 27,000 journalists, says more than 50 of its contracts directly address Al use.
