The theory is that journalists should report the news rather than headline it – but on Friday the Washington Post, the celebrated ally of American democracy during Watergate, broke that principle. The paper came out refusing to endorse the candidate in the forthcoming election who will defend the rule of law, against the convicted criminal who has shown time and again – not least on 6 January 2021 – that he explicitly aims to overturn it.
The Post’s British chief executive, Will Lewis, wrote an editorial that stated the Post would sit on the fence for the most significant US election of modern times (bringing to mind that old truth “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”).
That editorial, however, was followed by an act of open sedition from the news desk of the Post, which broke the inside story of the alleged influence on that decision from Jeff Bezos, the Amazon oligarch who bought the newspaper for $250m in 2013.
Bezos now finds himself in what might be called the “libertarian” billionaire’s dilemma. Having guaranteed the editorial independence of the Post, he can’t quite be seen to shut down the current story of his own interference; the result is that – at a paper that trumpets “democracy dies in darkness” – the craven decision-making of owner and chief executive stand exposed for all to see.
And for those many of us who first nurtured the idea of becoming journalists after watching All the President’s Men, it is cheering to read Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein still to the fore in this latest deep throat exposé.
Follow the money
At the Serpentine North Gallery in London’s Hyde Park there is an intriguing exhibition devoted to perhaps the most consequential legal struggle of our times – the question of who owns individual human creativity: are the words of writers and the melodies of musicians simply data to be “scraped” by AI companies, who seek to replicate them for their own profit, or should those individual human acts be protected, in the normal way, by copyright?
The Call, a collaboration between artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, dramatises this question in compelling ways – including with a cacophony of “vocal datasets” that are made to swell with human voices in digital concert.
The exhibition invites the idea that, used thoughtfully, AI can help the world to sing in perfect harmony. But there is another age-old principle at stake here: cui bono, follow the money.
If multinational conglomerates are so very keen to use all of our ideas to train their machines, the obverse has to apply: their highly guarded content-creating algorithms must also become open, for the transparent and regulated benefit of us all.
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Mind the Gap
Few acts of vandalism have had quite the same emotional impact as the chopping down of the beloved Sycamore Gap tree in Northumberland. In one response, the National Trust’s “Trees of Hope” campaign invited communities to make claims to 49 sycamore saplings (one for each foot of the height of the original) to be planted in homage.
On Friday, I put in a last-minute application for one of those saplings on behalf of this newspaper and its stalwart community of readers. In small part, I confess, this was an act of overdue contrition to all those kindly correspondents who have written to me and colleagues over the years to enquire, politely: “How many trees had to die for this bollocks to be printed?”
What better chance finally to begin to redress the balance?
