During the ICE surge in Minneapolis, AI is playing a role in this tense and unfolding story, specifically how it is contributing to misinformation. What can educators do to prepare students, and any of us, for this new information landscape where AI is increasingly a factor. Jeff visited the University of Minnesota’s journalism school and talked with a professor who is exploring the role of AI in news, as well as three student journalists covering protests and ICE activity.
During the ICE surge in Minneapolis, AI is playing a role in this tense and unfolding story, specifically how it is contributing to misinformation. What can educators do to prepare students, and any of us, for this new information landscape where AI is increasingly a factor. Jeff visited the University of Minnesota’s journalism school and talked with a professor who is exploring the role of AI in news, as well as three student journalists covering protests and ICE activity.
Links mentioned:
Photos, videos and other coverage from The Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota.
Trump social media post showing AI generated image of him attacking protesters, and an article about it.
"White House shares an altered photo of arrested Minnesota protester Nekima Levy Armstrong," in NBC News.
This transcript was generated by AI and hasn’t been carefully checked by a human yet. Apologies for misspellings and glitches.
Jeff Young:
Since last we talked things have gone so differently in the Twin Cities. Regular listeners will remember that back in October, it was just a few months ago, I teamed up and did an episode with the Podcast Producer from the University of Minnesota student newspaper, Ceci Heinen. For that episode, we set up a table on campus and asked students about their feelings around AI and how they used it now, with everything going on in the last couple of weeks here in the Twin Cities, I have been wondering how Ceci is doing and how things are going at that student paper, the Minnesota daily, we
Ceci Heinen:
We had meeting, a big meeting where we kind of like had professionals come in and talk to us about all of them, basically just saying we've never seen anything like this before. Everything that you guys are experiencing right now is totally singular and completely historic, and so, and these were journalists who've been journalists for their entire lives, and so like that was crazy in itself.
Jeff Young:
Of course, you've seen the headlines. You've seen the video reports from the Twin Cities I live in, St Paul so the ice surge, the killing of Renee good and Alex preddy by federal agents, and the groundswell of protest and community activism is unlike anything I've ever seen, as well, and it means the student newspaper has actually been stocking up on supplies they never thought they need.
Ceci Heinen:
The people who run the daily have been buying, like, gas masks, better higher quality press vests that have, like a bulletproof like front piece,
Jeff Young:
Yeah, well, bigger press pass bulletproof vest to be a student journalist.
Ceci Heinen:
Yeah, yeah. It's insane. I also just in like, all of us are, like, under the age of 22 and it's like, now we're going out there wearing a bulletproof vest in a gas mask. Like, what? What is this? I don't know. That has been definitely, like a surreal thing and just a very scary thing to being an editor, like having reporters that kind of, you know, report to me, having reporters who maybe want to go out in a situation like that, and then me knowing, like, god forbid anything happens to them like that guilt on me is going to be insane.
Jeff Young:
Welcome to learning curve, where we explore how education is adapting to the rise of generative AI.
I'm Jeff Young.
For this episode, I'm going to try to see what we can learn from Cece and from other student journalists that are trying to tell the story of what's happening in Minneapolis. And I'll talk to a professor here who's also trying to understand all this as she teaches these students. Of course, I'm curious about how AI is playing a role in this tense and unfolding story, specifically how it's contributing to misinformation online these days. What can educators do to prepare students and any of us for this new information landscape where AI is increasingly a factor before getting to the AI, though I feel it's important to set the stage and to hear what these student journalists are going through in Minneapolis. So earlier today, the same day I'm releasing this, it's Tuesday, February 3, I drove over to the University of Minnesota's campus and sat down with students and a professor, first with the new multimedia editor of the Minnesota daily, Hannah Reynolds, who is a senior at the University who's majoring in journalism, Okay, walk us through what I will put on the show notes some of the great work that the Minnesota daily student newspaper is doing. I was going through it myself and so but tell us about some of the images that that we'd see, that that listeners will see when they go there, that you that your student journalists and you have been documenting.
Hannah Reynolds:
No, I'm super proud. It was my first week on the job when all this stuff happened this last week. And so it was definitely kind of a birth by fire situation. But I was super proud of the photo and video desks at the Daily because we were able to go out on Friday the 23rd when the big protest and economic blackout happened, and we were able to do a lot of documenting. And so we spent, you know, five hours, you know, participating in that and documenting it. And so a lot of the images, at least in the photo story we just published, are from that day. But then we were planning on publishing just that photo story about that protest. But then, obviously, the events of Saturday the next morning unfolded, as
Jeff Young:
you may have guessed, that event she's referring to, on Saturday morning, I. Was the killing by ICE agents of Alex Pretti, a 37 year old intensive care nurse who was holding a cell phone, who was pepper sprayed, pinned to the ground and then shot and killed by agents as several bystanders captured the video of the scene from multiple angles, Trump administration officials quickly labeled Pretti a domestic terrorist and said he was endangering the officers. But as a New York Times News Analysis recently put it, the shooting turned into a turning point in public sentiment, as many who watched the video perceived it as an execution rather than something that looked like standard law enforcement procedure, yeah.
Hannah Reynolds:
And so I woke up to about 80 messages on my phone, and we just immediately, you know, started working together and figuring out who can get there first and start, you know, taking photos. And it was, it was a collaborative effort. I was able to, you know, try to go and get as close as I could to, you know, start documenting and taking photos myself. And then photographers on my desk, including people on the video desk, went out later to the vigils. You know, they, they went to the actual street where Alex pretty was shot and killed, and documented the community response that that evening. And then, you know, another photographer, you went to Whittier park where, you know, there are over 1000 people ended up showing up that night. And so it was just really a powerful kind of transference between Friday and Saturday, where, you know, you saw these people come together, and then on Saturday, you know, we were, the whole city was kind of thrown into grief again. And I think that that to document that transition and how, you know, that change over the span of four, you know, 24 hours was really crazy for us to experience, but also, I think it was very important that we just pushed through and we, you know, did our best to document as much of it as we could.
Jeff Young:
Yeah, so this, this coming together. So Renee good was killed, and these protests were sparked. This Friday was really describe what you the mood there was, it was more like people coming together in a kind of feeling of unity. Do you mean or, yeah.
Hannah Reynolds:
I think that there was a lot of hopeful energy. A lot of people coming like, just the sheer number two that showed up in sub zero temperatures. I have topreface, it was cold, right?
Jeff Young:
I mean, we're talking like more than, like, double digits in the negative.
Hannah Reynolds:
like negative 40, with wind chill, like it was brutal. And so people showed up anyway. And like, the amount of people that were undeterred to be there, I think, was really, you know, something that we tried to capture in all the images that we took, because there was just still this ferocity and this energy that you just couldn't like you just couldn't not see it when you were standing there with all these people. And then again, the sheer number of people, over 50,000 people showed up. And I know that another March happened again this past Friday, and I'm not sure what the number is there, but people continue to show up. And I think that that kind of speaks to the community response that has happened in Minnesota, which is very unique compared to other states. And I think that's been widely documented as well, just the sheer number of people that are coming together with their neighbors to try to say, hey, you know, we're not okay with what's happening. And so that was, that was really just, it was in the air, like you could just, you could just feel it.
Jeff Young:
I understand that you are attending safety trainings and your staff, yeah.
Hannah Reynolds:
So funny enough. I think it was the dates are kind of messed up in my head, but I was able to attend a safety training at the Star Tribune. We were a couple student spots were, you know, we were allowed in and to go and take part in this basically condensed version of, like, a he fat training.
Jeff Young:
And that stands for what?
Hannah Reynolds:
yeah, exactly. Like, I don't even, I actually can't recall off the top of my head what it stands for, but it's basically emergency medical training. They're giving you the basics of, like, if somebody's injured and bleeding, how can you help them? How can you potentially save a life if you're a photographer in that situation, which is something that I really, you know, I didn't imagine myself learning there, and, you know, maybe that's naive of me not to think that that would be necessary. But I, you know, it just wasn't something that I was that was even remotely on my radar, that I would have to learn how to, you know, potentially, you know, patch a bullet wound, or you know how to, you know how to put a tourniquet on, and these things, these skills that I never, you know, I didn't have any knowledge base for before, but I'm really glad that I know now, because we are seeing that, you know, just like how there's an increase in violence that's happening in the streets of Minneapolis, the reporters have also been, you know, hurt and injured in the process as well. It's not just community members that are being affected, impacted, you know, during these community responses to ice presence, but it's also the reporters that are going out that are being, you know, put in dangerous situations. And so it's like, it's critical that, like, the education is being passed around to not, you know, just the professionals in the industry, but the people that are, you know, like, I'm graduating this year. It's, it's critical that we know this, you know, as students, because we're right there too, and we're trying to do, you know, that job as well.
Jeff Young:
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's just. It's hard to believe. I mean, I mean, it makes sense. You wouldn't expect it. I mean, you're literally in this, you know, beautiful urban campus in Minneapolis. So, yeah, well, I mean, hang in there. It's, it's, it's exciting to see this work.
Hannah Reynolds:
I think that's like, the thing, it's like, it's mode, it, it's so what's happening is very tragic and very sad, but the response on our desk has been, how are we going to tackle this and do our jobs? And it's been, it's been motivating to go out and do this work, because we know that it matters. And even as a student publication, I think that that has been a good point of just, you know, we can do this if we work together. And it's really strengthened, kind of all of our mentalities around what's going on, because we just feel the camaraderie in the newsroom a lot more. And I think that that's that's a positive too, and we know, we know that what we're doing and we're coming together to do is so, so important. Again, even as a student organization on campus right
Jeff Young:
now, though, like everyone here in the Twin Cities, I have been living and breathing this story, I certainly have not been in the heart of any ice activity the way that Hannah has.
Are you? I mean, is it scary?
Hannah Reynolds:
It is I think that I, I don't know. I'm I'm one of these people that I think that I do well, in the case like when something is chaotic, I get calm. And so for me, like I went out on Saturday, I tried to get to two other reporters that were there on the scene a couple hours after Alex pardy was shot, and I was down the street. I couldn't get to them because the street had been blocked off at that point, and I was a block up from where they were dispersing the crowd and using tear gas. And that was like my first time being in that kind of environment. I know, you know, after, you know, leaving that situation, I'll never go into that again without a press fest or some of the proper things that you really do need to dot, you know, say that you're, you know, you know, a journalist in that situation. So it was a learning experience, but also it was a, it was interesting to, you know, stand on the street and you're seeing all these people and all these things are happening. And it's very it's all happening very quickly. But like, I stood there as, you know, like the armored cars went up the street and this guy went and, like, one of the moments that, just like, will ever be burned into my brain, I think, is he went and stood right in front of one of the armored trucks, and he didn't move. And they think that was such a crazy moment to watch, because for like, a split second, I really didn't know what was going to happen. And are you taking pictures? I am, yeah. So yeah. And so I was standing off to the side of the street, and again, no press fest, because I didn't have
Jeff Young:
One, yeah, because there wasn't the sense that this was going to keep happening, correct?
Hannah Reynolds:
Yeah, yeah. And so I was standing there, and I held my badge out in one hand, camera in the other, and I just took as many photos as I could and and the cars pass. But I mean, you know, people were getting, you know, pepper sprayed and tear gassed. And even, you know, we saw a very when, you know, video went viral of Cara love and reporter who, you know, got punched in the face. And, yeah, exactly. And so again, the violence towards reporters can't be understated, too. So it's it's scary because it there's an unpredictability there, where you're going in and you don't know if your safety is going to be prioritized in that situation.
Jeff Young:
I have a feeling listeners might be afraid for you as you describe this, I'm glad it sounds like, you know, I talked to ccet, and it sounds like there is more safety gear on hand since so you were equipping up for your photographers.
Hannah Reynolds:
We are, yeah, like we, we just invested in some pretty heavy duty gas masks for people, you know, not just the ones you can get at Home Depot, but you know, the nice ones with the good filters. And we're really just not taking it lightly, and you're not backing down. No, no. And I think that we don't, we wouldn't want to, you know, I think every reporter that I've talked to, we're all just really, really determined to document what's happening right now. Because who else is going to do that this close to campus? Right? You know, we have other the newspapers in Minnesota are documenting broadly what's going on everywhere, you know, but we're covering this community right here, right? And there's things happening. You know, ice is on. ICE has been on campus. There have been, you know, students that have, you know, been detained or, you know, confronted by different agents. And you know, they deserve to know what's going on, too. And if we're going to be their information source, we need to be as on the nose as possible. And so that's why everybody's, you know, really just working in overtime and just trying to make sure that we're doing everything we can to provide people with information, I think that's our that's our goal, whether that's through visuals and video or, you know, just through our editorial desks. So,
Jeff Young:
so how is AI playing a role in this story, and what can we learn about information literacy in the age of AI from what's unfolding in. Minneapolis, I'm going to come back to Hannah for her thoughts on those questions in a few minutes. But while I was on campus, I also sat down with one of Hannah's professors in the journalism school, Regina McCombs, a senior lecturer and a Senior Fellow in visual communication and photo journalism. I started by asking Regina to sum up how she talks about AI and misinformation in the courses that she's teaching these days on visual journalism, as well as ones on video and audio,
Regina McCombs:
the generative AI tools that have come along, really just the last couple of years, have gotten so much better that we used to have sort of all these little tips and tricks for spotting AI right. Look at how many fingers they had. Look and see if, you know, both their ears looked the same, sort of really simple things that you could look at and say, Oh, that's AI. And now it's much more difficult. And you can't necessarily just glance at a photo and say, Oh, that's AI. There are still some things that help you figure that out, but we're talking more and more about really thinking about an image. When we look at it and evaluating it's sort of in a big picture sense. Does this make sense? Is this logical? Is this likely? Does it confirm something I already believe? So I want to believe it. You know, there's just all kinds of sort of bigger picture things we think about as we're evaluating whether something has been created by AI. Wow.
Jeff Young:
So just to underline that, like, so, in other words, this shift of like, you know, most things were real and so you could sort of look for these tells that were actually not that hard. If you spend a second to okay, you're not going to necessarily be able to, as a human, do a detection of AI versus human. So you need to bring in your own, you know, your own thinking about like, what am I seeing? The context?
Regina McCombs:
Yeah, yeah. It really calls on far more critical thinking skills of all of us, and that sort of taking a beat, which I worry about, because so many of our feeds just fly by, right? You just scroll on by, and you don't have the time, or take the time, to sort of stop and say true or false, right? Or manipulated or not manipulated, because sometimes it's kind of partially true, and that takes a lot of work.
And so we talk about
Regina McCombs:
this idea of, how much time do you spend on these things, and how much time can you spend evaluating these things? So it's a big it's a big process now to go through all that.
Jeff Young:
And she says things are reaching the point where it might be too much to ask a typical person
Regina McCombs:
some of it's no longer consumer processable, right? We have more and more journalistic forensic teams that are really sort of spending time looking at evaluating the source and whether it's been manipulated, you know, and there are some tools, but they are imperfect tools, and I for the even for the experts, right? And you know, they may come up with something that says 80% chance that it's AI, well, okay, but that's still a 20% chance that it's not. And so it takes processing on multiple levels sometimes. And my concern is, how do we expect somebody going through their day to sort of make those calls on a regular basis?
Yeah, I kind of worry there's this push
Jeff Young:
for AI literacy, and there's been a long, you know, move for just information literacy as a part of what colleges and schools would teach. I wonder if these tools are reached a point where it's almost like beyond, beyond the standard strategy, right, the playbook of of what you and others in education have been doing, I think it is.
Regina McCombs:
There are still some tells, sure, you know, but now it's kind of the point of, do they look too perfect? Are their physiques like over the top idealized? Is their hair flawless? You know, it's more. Sort of, are things too perfect, rather than, are there five fingers? Are there five fingers?
Jeff Young:
Yeah. And what is that? I mean, what are the implications? I mean, we have it playing out here in the Twin Cities. You know, the campus is in Minneapolis. We're sitting there now. You know, what are the implications where? Where are some examples, even in the last couple weeks with the ice surge of of what we're talking about, or the possibilities with AI, yeah.
Regina McCombs:
I think maybe one of the best known right now is a picture that was supposedly AI enhanced, that alleges to show Alex pretty with a gun in his hand, when, in fact, it was a screenshot from a video that pretty clearly shows, if you play the whole video, that it was indeed a phone. And all the other videos support that as well. There is no video that shows him with a gun in his hand, but someone took this photo and, you know, sharpened it basically, and it, you know, makes it look more like there is a gun in his hand. And this has got a lot of play in some circles that he was actually really carrying a gun. And that sort of implies that it was a justified shooting in some way,
Jeff Young:
these feeds, I don't know what other people are seeing. You know, I see in my own feeds, if I'm looking swiping on like reels or something, you see, all I see are things that kind of confirm, you know, the news media I'm seeing in the accounts that have been proven true, but I'm not seeing these other videos you mentioned, where it's been enhanced to look like pretty was holding a gun. But I have read and believe that these are getting to show I've seen the image on a news feed or like a news article about this trend. I guess that's the other thing. Is, it feels like these algorithms are built to divide. And I know that a long time ago, there was this idea of filter bubble, which seemed kind of novel at some point, but now it just feels very true, and we don't know what other people are seeing.
Regina McCombs:
Oh, 100% I mean, the algorithms are such that if you click on anything, right? You get more and more and more and more of that.
Jeff Young:
Yes, so that's right. So it sort of assumes, if you watched it, then you must like it, and we'll give you more of that, right?
Regina McCombs:
Which is one of the reasons I've been a little tentative to sort of look at more of these clearly manipulated things, because I don't want more of them in my feed interesting. And I've toyed with the idea of creating, you know, some kind of throwaway accounts that I could spend more time looking at some of these things, because I do think a lot of this stuff just never comes across my feed, because it's not what I look at, and they give me more and more and more of the things that I do consume.
Jeff Young:
So you can't even try to perform this public service of putting out an article or a blog post or something that would say like, this is wrong, or this has been proven false, because you don't know, you know what it is that is being shown to well,
Regina McCombs:
and groups of people, right? And plenty of serious researchers out there are doing this right, but they're sort of deep into the research and study of it. And for me, it's more like influencing my teaching and work here, rather than a deep research so God bless those folks that they're, you
Jeff Young:
know, trying to hit the real time corrections and then fact checking,
Regina McCombs
yeah, and and really seeing what's what's being spread across the spectrum of beliefs.
Jeff Young:
What I mean, honestly, what can you know educators do to both in journalism and even beyond like, to prepare students for this world that has so much AI in it all of a sudden, I think
Regina McCombs:
those you know critical thinking skills have never been more important than they are right now, getting our students to pause and maybe even step back from some of their consumption, I think talking about the algorithms, and it's not just the algorithms in what we see, but even in the content creation, what's in the algorithms. We find bias in the algorithms. If I ask AI to show me a picture of a happy family, odds are massive that's going to be a white and blonde family, just because of kind of what's in the system, how the algorithms work. You know, there's all kinds of bias toward the beautiful, right? There have been some really interesting studies about, you know, people asking for an average looking person, and that average looking person looks like a model. It's like Hollywood casting. Yeah, exactly. And the ugly person is either, you know, approaching average, or they are ridiculously over the top, like, again, Hollywood hag kind of thing, you know. So there's, you know, even in the sort of creation tools, there's all kinds of bias in the algorithm. So that's a piece we have to talk about with our students, because some of them will use AI to create materials, right? There are times that they may need to do that, they may need to do that, and they need to understand that element of it as well.
Jeff Young:
After all, many fields outside of journalism are quickly adopting AI tools like marketing and lots of parts of corporate America and in journalism, recent studies show that audiences want disclosures when AI. Is used, but that they trust sources less when they hear AI is involved. One unusual aspect of the Trump administration is its embrace of AI generated memes, fanciful images and videos that are created by bots.
These aren't meant to fool anybody,
Jeff Young:
but they're often making aggressive jokes or glorifying a certain narrative. This Trump administration has been very keen to embrace AI enhanced images, even before the ice surge. So are and you know they're these are on actual you know, Trump tweeting on his truth social or wherever he puts materials or people in the administration, high up in the administration, like Cabinet Secretaries putting out AI manipulated images, some of which are not necessarily, interestingly, not like necessarily, like trying to trick you into thinking something's real. Could you talk a little bit about this kind of meme use, which involves generative AI by the administration in, you know, in the last year or so, or leading up to now.
Regina McCombs:
Yeah, I mean, they aren't hiding it. It's not right.
Jeff Young:
We're not giving away a secret here,
Regina McCombs
right, correct? I mean, they've clearly said, Yes, we're doing it. It's memes. We love it. We're going to keep doing it. Give it a couple examples for those who haven't been paying attention. Well, I mean, it was hard to miss the Trump in a fire firefighting jet as a jet firefighter, I mean, so this AI generated video, which I will put a link to in the show notes,
Jeff Young:
shows Trump's head inside a fighter plane that has King Trump written on it, and you hear the sounds of the song from Top Gun as Trump flies the plane over a large no kings protest and drops some sort of Brown, gross liquid on the crowd below.
Regina McCombs:
It's all of these things that sort of really make him look muscular and large and tough or friendly or whatever that particular meme is. And while they're not pretending it's true, they still, I think, have an impact in either making you cheer for that, you know, jet pilot, or, you know, roll your eyes, whatever it might be. It's really It's fascinating to me, and it's everywhere I given my own personal belief about the use of AI. I find it distressing that this is coming from our highest level of government with kind of no apology. What are the what are these? What is the potential impact of these
Jeff Young:
images, other than in a way, you're what I'm hearing a little bit is like, even though, you know it's not true, you might, especially if you sort of are prone to like, like the narrative, it sort of makes you feel good, potentially, as that, you know, if somebody is pro Trump, but what are the implications for information literacy here, as far as and misinformation with these uses?
Regina McCombs:
One of the interesting things I saw last year, there was a study that came out of the pictures that were coming out of Gaza, and what it found was that there were obviously a few AI generated images that kind of became memes around what was happening in Gaza, but they found that the vast majority were realistic images. Were actual images that had been taken of what was happening there, people were less likely to believe them, just because the potential for the AI images existed, or because they had seen an AI image related to it. So they tended to doubt all of the images. And if you think about that, that's pretty disturbing, because, you know, photos have always been able to be manipulated. But it usually took a lot of work. It took some skill or time, but they photos have been kind of proof, right? Photos and video both have kind of been proof that something happened or didn't happen, as the case may be with Alex pretty gun, and if nobody believes anything anymore, where does that leave us? I don't know. How do we get to the truth? If nobody will believe the photos and video, because they could have been manipulated, and they could
Jeff Young:
have, and it's a tenant right of photojournalism that you know, and the movement right now to be on the streets in the Twin Cities, observing with your camera phone, and the governor saying, Go out and and get you know, do video, because that could prove. You know, in case there's some lie or manipulation, right?
Regina McCombs:
And it's just been the sort of sheer volume of these videos that have sort of proved them right, because you have them from a dozen different angles, and they're all showing the same thing. That gives you that kind of level of proof. But it used to be kind of one video would have been enough. Now you need so many more to sort of say, Yeah, this is what actually happened.
Jeff Young:
It seems like that's the big change. Just that has happened with the ice surge and the images that have come out of these killings of good and pretty like that. We that the fact that there were multiple angles has been the reason I think a lot of people are, are maybe seeing it and it and this, AI narrative, I feel like has been mostly discredited. I don't know how you see it.
Regina McCombs:
No, I agree. I think that largely, except for, you know, sort of some very small filter bubbles, those things have been discredited. But not every situation is going to have those multiple angles, right? Not every incident in the future is going to have 20 photographers standing there. So does that mean we no longer believe it unless there's multiple angles and things I don't know. There are some technological things coming along. There's something called Content credentials that a lot of companies are sort of working together to develop. It's probably several years down the road and and the idea of that is it will just tell you what has been done to an image. It won't say that it's not AI manipulated, but it will say you can look at every step along the way,
Jeff Young:
almost like a Google doc version history or something Exactly. That's exactly
Regina McCombs:
what it is. And you know, that's great. But again, is everyone going to want to click on that little icon and look through it to see? I think it's asking a lot of people on their social feeds to stop look at the version history, see what's been done to it. And, you know, and take that so sure. There will be some images that that will be great to be able to say, look, we could show you exactly what's been done to this image. It was taken in a camera that's got this certification in it, you know, it was moved into Photoshop and, you know, corrected in these ways, you know, and use this AI tool in Photoshop,
Regina McCombs:
yeah, or didn't use any AI tools in Photoshop, sure. And then you'll be able to say, okay, good. That is all well within the parameters of great journalism, and that's an image we can trust.
You know, whether the public will want to even do that, I don't know. It'll be great for editors, right? People working with user generated content and submitting it, or even freelancers they haven't worked with before, they'll be able to look at the metadata and say, Okay, it's legit, right? So there's,
Jeff Young:
it's like, send it back to the lab. I'm just picturing, you know, it's like, but it doesn't match the pace of news consumers, but it could still be great for the you know, the New York Times has analyzed this image, or exactly, Fox News has analyzed this image, whatever it is, yeah.
Regina McCombs:
So it's definitely going to have benefit when it sort of gets all developed, but it takes this level of coordination with the camera manufacturers and the software developers, and then the, you know, the people who create and, you know, edit and all of that. So it's complicated, and I suspect it's many years out yet before it's going to be a true standard.
Jeff Young:
I asked Regina what it feels like to be teaching through this turbulent moment.
Regina McCombs:
You know, it's complicated. It's everyone's life here right now is complicated. Students are reacting in various ways, right? Some of them are afraid, some of them are energized. So that's been a piece of it, sort of figuring out what is it safe for us to ask our students to do right now, because we've seen this can be very dangerous, so we've had to sort of develop safety guidelines for our students if they are choosing to go out in the field. So one of the things we've said is we know assignments will require a student to go out and cover a protest or a vigil or an ice confrontation.
Jeff Young:
These are all assignments that would be very natural in the past, or at least within the bounds, right?
Regina McCombs:
Certainly, a march or a vigil would have been like, yeah, go to this you know thing, and that'd be a great. Assignment. But now it's just, do you put a 20 year old in a position of sort of having to make split second decisions that could impact their lives permanently? We, you know, just said, not unless they've made an educated choice themselves. And then we've laid out some pretty strict guidelines. If they do decide to go, you know, they have to take someone with them. They, you know, they have to make sure someone knows when they're supposed to be back. They have to have phone numbers with them. They have to, you know, sort of do all of these kinds of safety things that professional journalists are doing as well, and we are trying to get them the same kind of training that professional journalists are getting right now. There's something called hostile environment and first aid training, key fat training that a lot of the journalists in town are going through. And we're trying to get some of our students through that, the ones that are eager to be out, and our students at the Minnesota daily, the student newspaper. So it's just, you know, the level of complexity has gone up this semester, that's for sure.
Jeff Young:
After the break, more from the student journalists here, especially on how they see AI and its role in today's news landscape.
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Jeff Young:
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Jeff Young:
So what do students think about AI's influence on how news is spreading these days? I asked Hannah Reynolds, the student multimedia editor that we heard from earlier, and she had a pretty stark take.
Hannah Reynolds:
I would say that I think AI is going to be our next biggest battle when it comes to misinformation, and I think that we're not fully prepared for just how confusing it can make things, and it's already doing that, right? There was a woman who was arrested. I jotted her name down, nakema levy Armstrong, and the White House posted a photo of a digitally altered picture of her when she was arrested, and that picture has been passed around and, you know, reposted. And they're like, Oh, look at she's sobbing and she's crying, you know, it's like, this is this image that they built, and it was fake. It wasn't real. She the real photo is, you know, when she's arrested, her face is, you know, not. She's not crying, and her, even her skin tone, was darkened in that AI generated image. And so,
Jeff Young:
yeah, I will put this in the show notes. And it sounds like Chrissy gnome had previously shared out the undoctored image, right?
Hannah Reynolds:
Yeah, yeah. And so it's just confusing. And so, like, I think of my grandparents who I was talking to my roommate about this last night, while we might be able to, and this is changing too, because it's getting better, but while we may able to still, you know, detect when AI is being
Jeff Young:
used, we being a young person who's steeped in this, potentially,
Hannah Reynolds:
right, like, you know, it's like, there's, there's telltale signs that an image is has been, you know, doctored, or that it's been, you know, through an AI system. But that's changing, like it's not it's actually like I have the fact that I've been tricked multiple times by AI pictures, and I feel like I'm pretty good at sussing out an AI image, you know, when I'm looking at it on social media. That's scaring me, because I I'm becoming less likely to be able to know if it's aI altered. But then there's also the flip side of all this, where, you know, depending on the political party that you know, these issues are, you know, coming across on, I know there was a lot of people that were like, Oh, the shooting of Alex pretty was that was AI or, like, they're, they're saying that this, that wasn't real, or so, I think it's gonna honestly be the next biggest thing where, in an almost Orwellian fashion, it's going to be the thing that says, Oh, you're not seeing what you think you see. And I think that that's very scary, because if we can no longer trust, you know, the visuals that are coming across our news feed, or, you know, in our hands, that's, that's, that's scary, like, and we need to be able to trust the information that's being captured in citizen journalism is so important right now. But if it's being doctored, or, you know, people are using it and reposting it in a in a bat, in a negative way, then, then that's kind of something we have to contend with.
Jeff Young:
And she says her overall view on AI has also soured. I have
Hannah Reynolds:
been somebody that, at first was very enamored by, oh, it, you know, by AI, and, like, the use of it, right? I was like, Oh, this fun new tool. I have since severed any, you know, AI, you know, platforms that I previously used. I've stopped using them because I've really realized how corrosive they were. Even for me, I. Um, I think that as a student, I think it's dangerous how chat GBT, specifically, as a platform has become something that students can rely on. Because even as a as a student graduating right now, I've seen just how much of you know classroom conversations to the work being submitted is, you know, potentially not even people's genuine thought or feeling. And I think that that's scary, because we, we want to be able to have conversations where you're actually talking about what you believe in, not what the chat GBT robot told you to think and put in your discussion posts. I've literally written discussion posts in class, and the responses to my discussion posts in class have been AI generated. It's just, it's just discouraging, because these are, you know, it's like, that's, these are going to be my colleagues, you know, in the workforce one day. And I don't really want to be working in a workforce that's saturated in AI generated content. And, you know, and also, it's like, chat, G, B, t, it says in the bottom, in this very teeny, little fine print, it will lie to you. It'll tell you what you want to hear. And so I absolutely think people should be scared of that, because that's not we should not want. We should not want that. We should not want a system that's just going to tell us what we want to hear.
Jeff Young:
There was one other thing I was really curious to ask about, which is how students get their news these days, and how much of it comes from social media platforms. Rather than say going to a news site, that was one question I asked another student journalist, Leslie bliss, who is a second year at the University of Minnesota, and she is a photojournalist for the student paper.
Leslie Bleess:
I haven't been like consuming too much on social media. I try and stay off of it, because I have never been a big fan of social media to begin with. I just haven't, and I really try not to go on it too.
Jeff Young:
much, so you're not swiping for your latest glimpse into what's going on in the world.
Leslie Bleess:
I did at the very beginning of everything that was happening with ice, and then I just got overwhelmed and, you know, frustrated, because there was a lot of opinions, also not just news. And I didn't want to hear the opinions. I wanted to hear what was happening. You wanted
Jeff Young:
to kind of control what you were seeing and who's saying. What do you in these as you like, learn things.
Leslie Bleess:
Yeah, I needed to protect my mental well being. I needed to understand what was happening and get a feel and understand what was happening. But I couldn't let it absolutely take over and see all of these, you know, these people who are sad. And, I mean, I'm sad, you know, like, I Yeah, and, but I need a space to step away and remember or take care of myself.
Jeff Young:
I'm curious about this. Actually, you you see your peers use, you know, get their news from various places. Do you feel like it's a hard sell these days to get them to go to the Minnesota daily say, or other news out like, you know, as far as like the folks around you? Like that you see in their their habits of getting information, I
Leslie Bleess:
do think it's a hard sell. I think it's a hard sell because it's, it's really easy to consume your news on social media
Jeff Young:
just to swipe through one of these, you know, tick tock, or reels or Instagram,
Leslie Bleess:
and it's really easily digestible on, you know, it's a video, or, you know, it's, no they are videos, you know, right
Jeff Young:
videos, you don't have to type anything in, and it's just kind of like, yeah, experience.
Leslie Bleess:
You don't have to go specifically searching for it. It's just pops up on your feet and it's like, right there, yeah.
Jeff Young:
Do you feel like people are getting their news? That is the way people are getting their news, like, just through in this event, is being shaped by what's on these platforms. It sounds like
Leslie Bleess:
I do. I do think that people consume, at my age, consume their news from social media platforms. And maybe it's not tick tock or Instagram, maybe it's YouTube, you know, sure, I don't know. Do you consider YouTube? Uh, yeah, no. I mean, it's one of these social social platform, yeah. I mean, maybe it's, you know, a little bit longer form content on a YouTube video. But I think it's, I think a lot of people my age consume their news that way.
Jeff Young:
They're not going to a brand of a, of a, you know, the New York Times or anywhere.
Leslie Bleess:
No, before I started journalism, I didn't consume my news from KSTP or care 11 or WCC or Star Tribune, because it was, yeah, that are wonderful. Now, the reason I do is because I've been taught, like, it's, you know, I there's a reason I do because it's trust. I trust it. I've looked into it, I've met the people you know that it's another reason I'm like,
Jeff Young:
this is the field you want to go into. It sounds like, yeah. But before
Leslie Bleess:
this much easier to consume my news on social media, and that's it. I think a lot of people want it the easy way right now, and it's definitely easy for me to go on social media find that news, but I trust it more on other sites that are the local um. You know,
Jeff Young:
Hannah, the student we heard from earlier, agreed that it can be hard to convince classmates to read the Minnesota dailies articles these days, or pretty much any news article.
Hannah Reynolds:
I think that it is because we, and I don't like saying that, like I wish that it was something where, you know, social media wasn't a primary news source. But for a lot of people, it is now today, like, when you ask people, where do you see your news Oh, Instagram, Tiktok. And I think that, I think we really have to, like, question ourselves on that a little bit, because, again, it's not a verified news source. Instagram. Anything that you're seeing on there, it's like, it's basically, we've talked about this. I've talked about this with friends. We're kind of in this saturated, like, opinion culture right now, where it's like, everybody has a podcast, for example, or, you know what I mean, and it's, you know, it's like, every everybody wants to tell you what they believe, but, you know, like, for example, it's like, you know, Joe Rogan isn't exactly telling you the news. He's telling you what he believes is a person, an individual, or any of these other, you know, big podcasts that are, you know, that have entered the political sphere like they're telling you what they think. They're not telling you necessarily, all the facts and the context and the information that traditional news media works hard to provide and, you know, so I think that that is potentially, you know, a really negative turn that, like, my that's kind of taken over my generation. But, like, I was raised, you know, by, you know, a dad who had cable news running in the background. So I still, you know, I'll watch, you know, MSNBC occasionally, but I do really not I, you know, I, I mostly just, you know, go off of news on, you know, like, you know, I'll follow the New York Times on Instagram, right? I'll follow like that is a way that I am seeing news firsthand, and I'm often seeing it first there, as opposed to, you know, getting news notifications on my phone. So it's the expediency is, is a good thing, but I think that, I think that we have to be careful, because influencers are not journalists, and I think that there's a lot of confusion as to who has the credentialing and the experience to tell you facts and not just bury you in I believe this. I believe that because you're not able to make up your own mind, I think that that's really unfortunate, that a lot of people are just getting kind of immersed in again, opinion, just a bunch of opinions, and then they're not able to ascertain what's factual versus just what some guy's thinking on a Thursday morning over a cup of coffee. If that makes any sense, like that's
Jeff Young:
just No, I mean, it, it sort of plays into the AI question, really, is that there's been this muddling of of the trusted source, yeah. And people trust, sometimes people trust these influencers just because they're used to them. They're following them, they're they feel connected them, and podcasters and everything. And, you know, the variation is huge on like, how ethical or truth telling folks.
Hannah Reynolds:
Yeah. And I think that that's something interesting too, because is there something that can be learned by the personability and the way that news is being, you know, you know, shared on on these platforms by, you know, people that are even just trying to do citizen journalism by mainstream networks? I think, yes, I think that there is a lot that they can learn from, you know, maybe how social media is changing, you know, people's, you know, daily life of how they're consuming news, right? It's, it's, it's a tool that even my teachers, Regina and Matt Kovic, and different professors who I've had throughout the years, they've, you know, all said the same thing, the industry is having to evolve and figure out how to reach more people, because that is the platform that you know, a ton of people exist on now that's where people are finding information, and so I'm sure the student paper is doing it too. Yeah, no, I mean, and we really tried to do that. The last two weeks, we've been really trying to beef up getting video content on social media.
Jeff Young:
As I sat down with all these folks, I made sure to ask how they're doing, because these last few weeks really have felt unprecedented and hard.
How are you holding up? I mean, yeah,
Hannah Reynolds:
that's like, the question that I've been getting a lot this last two weeks is, like, from everybody, from friends, from family, from people that I work with. And I think that the response I've given to a lot of people is I'm still processing it. I think it's hard to, like, pin down exactly how I'm feeling, because we're kind of working to do a job while all of this crazy stuff is happening. And so it's, it's difficult to, I think, compartmentalize sometimes the emotions that you're feeling and going through while also trying to do a professional job. And in this case, tell the stories of people that are being impacted by, you know, what's going on. And so it's, I'm still processing. That's where I'm at.
Jeff Young:
Your care. I mean, you're basically carrying, living it and also trying to, like you said, be a professional, use your skills and try to tell the story that you're uniquely positioned to tell, right?
Hannah Reynolds:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, no. And I think it's, it's, it's been interesting too, because we're surrounded by. By professionals who've been in the industry, in the journalism industry, for, you know, a couple decades. And they're, they're looking at us and they're saying, This is unprecedented, to use an overused term, but like, it's, it's crazy and it's wild what's happening right now, and at least we don't feel so alone when they're saying that what you're dealing with is so unique and unusual that they're even, you know, they're like, we don't even know how to fully, you know, get a grip on it and come to terms with what's happening too. So yeah,
Jeff Young:
this has been learning curve. This episode was put together by me Jeff Young. This one was a bit of a sprint to put together, but I am excited to try to share this in a timely way. Again. Please support the show by telling a friend about the podcast or leaving a rating or review. Music. This episode is by komaku and I used an AI tool mid journey for the episode. Art. We'll be back in two weeks until then.
Thanks for listening.