Abstract

Journalists have mostly focused on AI news from a business lens, offering stakeholders reports on software utilities and their potential disruption. This application-based approach has left a gap with end-users, including journalists themselves, in questioning whether AI solutions are always desirable, and when so, whether citizen rights to data ownership and privacy are respected in the process. Following major security breaches and calls for big data regulation, this topic is compelling for journalistic examination as some citizens show reluctance over sharing personal information, even during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In that context, very little academic research exists on how journalists cover AI news and therefore few guidelines exist on its best practices. In this essay, I summarize existing reports on how AI is covered, delineate what makes this news beat unique, and how journalists can co-opt rights-based approaches to engage their audience. Seven alternative angles are discussed in combination with practice advice for moving the journalism conversation on AI forward. This approach seeks to encourage further journalism studies research into the topic.