Bluesky

The publisher of The New York Times recently made an extraordinary speech about AI, journalism, and the public square that’s received surprisingly little public reaction. What makes A.G. Sulzberger’s speech extraordinary is that it was unabashedly crusading, and crusading is a stance New York Times publishers have rarely if ever adopted over the newspaper’s 175-year history. What makes the scant reaction surprising is that the speech’s audience—fellow leaders of some of the world’s most powerful news organizations—have a commercial self-interest in the crusade Sulzberger is advocating for. What’s more, the accusations Sulzberger made, the plainspoken language he used, the alleged villains he called out by name—Google, Meta, OpenAI—are the stuff of high drama.

Sulzberger’s core argument when addressing the annual WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference on June 1 was that Big Tech is stealing the news media’s property and undermining democracy, and that the only solution is for news organizations to work together to resist them.

Big Tech’s “hijacking of the public square is made possible by the original sin that animates their AI products—a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale,” Sulzberger argued. “Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation. They repackage these stolen goods as their own, siphoning off the audiences and revenue that otherwise would go to the news organizations that created this work.”

If such stealing is allowed to continue, he continued, we risk a “future where a crucial wellspring of a healthy society and a stable democracy—the truth, understanding and accountability provided by original journalism—continues to dry up…. The news industry’s only path to counteracting [Big Tech’s machinations]…is by working together” to protect the industry’s property rights, including through lawsuits. (The Times, he noted, has spent $20 million on such lawsuits.)

In sum, the publisher of one of the world’s most influential newspapers has accused some of the richest, most powerful companies on Earth of being criminals, of building their vast fortunes on a foundation of lies and theft at grand scale. And he urged the rest of the media to join the Times in fighting back, not only for the sake of their own commercial survival but for the survival of a free press and the democracy it nourishes.

Bravo to Le Monde, Variety, and Press Gazette for writing about the speech, and to The Seattle Times for publishing excerpts on its opinion page. But given the big names, enormous sums, and profound stakes involved, why has there been so little other coverage? Why are those outlets the exceptions?

Here’s a hint: The Times itself didn’t report on the speech. Instead, the business side of the paper issued a press release containing the text. But there was no mention of the speech in the news, business, opinion, or other sections of the paper. That absence reflects a view long held by newsroom traditionalists: We (almost) never report on ourselves. The corollary—nor do we report on our competitors—likely explains why the rest of the media has been silent.

Perhaps such coverage is still to come; certainly Sulzberger’s call to arms warrants the attention of any specialist outlet focused on the news media. And maybe there are executive conversations taking place right now that will result in other newsrooms joining Sulzberger’s movement. After all, his speech did invite journalists and news executives to get in touch, offer their own ideas, and explore possible collaborations.

Covering Climate Now welcomes this opportunity, and we urge fellow journalists around the world to consider pursuing it as well. We find Sulzberger’s analysis of the dangers facing our industry and our society persuasive, and highly pertinent to our core concern of how journalism reports on the climate emergency and its solutions.

AI, in case it isn’t obvious, is bad for the climate because its data centers demand gargantuan amounts of scarce water and costly electricity, but it is also bad because building AI chatbots, among other things, sucks away revenue that rightfully belongs to news outlets. That theft is one reason why, as Sulzberger noted, the US has “lost 75 percent of its journalists and more than 3,000 newspapers” over the last two decades. That’s 3,000 newspapers that will never tell the climate story.

Even for news outlets that remain in business, shrunken revenue makes it challenging to cover even routine subjects, much less a story like climate change. AI is no friend to a free press or a livable climate, and it’s time journalists grapple with how we respond.