Dr. Carolyne Lunga
In recent years, the global adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in journalism has accelerated rapidly, raising significant concerns about media credibility, accountability, transparency, and the preservation of public trust. Journalists have resigned for unethical uses of Gen AI demonstrating how public trust and credibility swiftly deteriorates when verification and accountability are eroded.
There is currently no global data documenting the exact numbers of journalists who have lost their jobs due to the unethical use of generative AI. However, cases from around the globe underline an incredibly important fact: ethical standards, long regarded as the cornerstone of journalism, are more essential than ever. When there is a breach of ethics, the reputation and legacies of respected institutions and journalists are significantly tarnished. According to a CBS news report in August 2024, a reporter at The Cody Enterprise in Wyoming in the United States resigned after admitting to using Gen AI to fabricate quotes and stories in local reporting.
Meanwhile, France 24 reported that a German public broadcaster ZDF dismissed New York correspondent Nicola Albrecht for using Gen AI images on a story on immigration raids in the US in February 2026. According to the article, one of the videos had Sora’s (Open AI’s video generation) watermark and the video not labelled as AI generated.
In a previous article, ‘The indispensable human: Contextual truth in the age of generative artificial intelligence’, published by the leading Qatar daily newspaper, The Peninsula, I argued that the journalist was indispensable meaning that Gen AI tools such as ChatGPT, ElevenLabs, Descript, Claude among others cannot replace journalists. This is because journalists bring lived realities and ‘truth’ that is grounded in the people, places and their history.
In this article, I argue that journalists have an enormous obligation to uphold ethics as these principles constitute the foundation of credible and trustworthy journalism. Integrating Gen AI into the newsroom workflow does not mean that journalists should negate their obligation to verify facts, cross-check quotes for accuracy, ensure that images are not manipulated, and not deceptively handle the truth. Seemingly innocuous editorial shortcuts can undermine journalistic standards if left unchecked. Journalists should act with honesty and respect when dealing with sources. Where mistakes have been made, they should be transparent, exercise accountability and admit to their wrongs. Corrections should be issued promptly with the same prominence that the story was given. Demonstrating strong commitment and vigorously safeguarding standards in a Gen AI context is the norm for newsrooms seeking to safeguard best practice. For decades, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and The Public Should Expect by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel has been employed as the industry standard on ethics and practice of journalism in the Global North and in various other parts of the world. In journalism schools worldwide, student journalists are systematically introduced and oriented to the normative foundations of this important profession through rigorous engagement with this key text viewed as a strong foundation in journalism education.
Practicing journalists are similarly expected to internalize and implement these principles or those of their institutions through training, newsroom culture or shared beliefs about the purpose and role of journalism, mentorship, and continuous professional development. In some contexts, journalists are governed by self-regulatory bodies, including media or press councils, which are responsible for enforcing ethical standards within the profession. As Kovach and Rosenstiel underline, principles of accuracy and truth should always be guarded.
In the pursuit of truth, journalists are required to act transparently with sources and reveal methods of gathering information for audiences to make their own assessment about the information. For Kovach and Rosenstiel, public interest remains an uncompromised frontier of journalism, and journalists are expected to be loyal to citizens despite the fluid and shifting allegiances exhibited by media institutions. In Elements of Journalism, verification is considered a cornerstone of journalism which should always be done with diligence.
Relating to Gen AI, individual journalists and newsroom leadership are obligated to promote the highest standards of ethics. To maintain the integrity of the Fourth Estate, ethical codes must be a living and readily accessible point of reference for journalists throughout the reporting process. Entry level journalists should be explicitly guided and mentored by senior colleagues when confronting ethical dilemmas, while freelancers must be systematically informed, of the same internal professional codes that govern practice.
Newsrooms must clearly define where Gen AI is permitted, forbidden, and who is accountable when harm occurs to sources. There should be transparency when it comes to clearly signing off AI assisted articles. Articles, images and videos generated with AI should be categorized as such while journalists should openly declare content that has been generated with Gen AI before publication rather than hiding behind the language of “AI said so” journalism when their stories/quotes turn out to be false. Case studies cited above demonstrate that Gen AI can fabricate quotes, prompting sources to come forward and refute making those statements.
Gen AI takes information from various sources without attribution unless asked to include them. Even when instructed to provide references, Gen AI can misrepresent sources or make up citations, raising significant concerns about credibility. Plagiarism undermines the values of originality, accountability, and truth that sustain journalism as a profession. Historically, journalists found to have plagiarised have often exited the profession, not as an unfortunate anomaly but as a predictable consequence of violating journalism’s most fundamental ethical obligation: truth. While working as a journalist, I was repeatedly reminded by the editor that adherence to truth and objectivity was non-negotiable. In my capacity as a journalism professor, I consistently reinforce the importance of these principles among the students I teach.
To safeguard journalistic integrity in a Gen AI context I recommend three practical strategies notwithstanding that there may still be challenges in implementation as acknowledged by scholars such as Porlezza et al (2024). Firstly, newsrooms should develop an ethical toolkit for Gen AI assisted journalism which outlines where generative AI may be legitimately employed, for instance in researching story ideas and potential angles, transcription of speeches (but with rigorous human verification for accuracy), language translation accompanied by thorough human oversight and data analysis/visualization.
If stories are rewritten with Gen AI, they need to be cross-checked against the journalists’ primary documents/evidence including recordings and diaries. Significantly, journalists should keep in mind that Gen AI is not a neutral tool but a tool that is shaped by the GenAI systems designed to learn patterns from existing data and generate new content that resembles what they have learned, rather than retrieving facts or exercising judgment. Secondly, informed by Cai and Nishal (2023), I propose academic industry partnerships where regular AI literacy workshops are held with experts which analyze Gen AI assisted stories from different beats and promote discussion around what Gen AI is, its capabilities, how it works, how it can be used and its ethical and privacy implications. Thirdly, Gen AI outputs should be thoroughly factchecked. Adopting a proactive and not reactive approach is fundamental for newsrooms.
Ultimately, as newsrooms integrate Gen AI into editorial workflows, journalists must renew their ethical obligations to society, asserting that integrity and accountability are indispensable to maintaining trust and upholding journalism’s public interest role. Ethical codes are not mere symbolic documents but operational guidelines for the preservation of truth, integrity and best practice in a democratic society.
—Dr. Carolyne Lunga is an Associate Professor in Digital Communication and Media Production (DCMP) at the University of Doha for Science and Technology (UDST).
Dr. Carolyne Lunga is an Associate Professor in Digital Communication and Media Production (DCMP) at the University of Doha for Science and Technology (UDST)
