A post on social media platform X issued by media organisation Al Jazeera shows what seems to be a “report” on the ongoing drama in the Philippine Senate surrounding embattled Senator Ronald ‘Bato’ dela Rosa. There were reports of gunfire last night in the Senate building as dela Rosa attempted to flee arresting officers acting on a warrant of arrest issued by a foreign “criminal court”. The video accompanying the post, at first glance, appeared to show devastation caused by the reported fire fight.
However, it turned out that the video was not of the incident nor was it even taken in the Philippines and, instead, contained what seemed to be footage taken of the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon. We have contacted Al Jazeera correspondent for the Philippines Barnaby Lo for comment and haven’t received a response at press time.
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One can only speculate on what could have accounted for such a massive lapse in editorial oversight. Was it a reflection of the reality of the rapidly-evolving landscape Big Corporate Media businesses compete in nowadays? It is, indeed, one that is characterised by a mad hour-by-hour scramble — often at the expense of basic journalistic rigour — to publish content to capture those dollar-delivering clicks. Even more disturbing, could it be a Freudian slip that reveals what many have long suspected to be a bias against certain countries, societies, and characters regarded by the editors and shareholders of these organisations to be deliberate perpetrators of “crimes against humanity”?
This all could, of course, be chalked up to genuine “human error” — or, worse, AI error. Who knows, right? Nowadays it is a bit more of a challenge determining whether there was a true or authentic human in the loop accounting for what we see on the Net. Big Corporate Media — for that matter, most big corporations — nowadays are under immense pressure to comply with orders from the powers-that-be to “use more AI”. From a business perspective, that makes perfect sense considering trillions of dollars are at stake in investments in a technology scrounging around for practical use cases.
More importantly, humans now compete not just amongst themselves but against a new emerging intelligence — the first non-human intelligence in history that actually threatens our humanity. Literally: Oh the humanity! Indeed, it is one thing for a runner to compete with another human in the Olympics. “Journalists” nowadays are doing the equivalent of runners competing with F1 cars. Sad.
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