Anchors Away

In Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro has refused to accept election results and insists that he won (sound familiar?), journalists are increasingly concerned about the risks of reporting the facts about the election. In some cases, they’ve opted to use AI avatars to do the talking. ‘Being on camera is no longer sensible’: persecuted Venezuelan journalists turn to AI. “The need for virtual-reality newscasters is easy to understand given the political chill that has descended on Venezuela since Maduro was first elected in 2013, and has worsened in recent days.” (Imagine reporting on a US president with total immunity who has called the press the enemy of the people and promised to punish his political enemies.)

+ “Reporting on powerful people has never been easy. But Rothenberg’s plight demonstrates exactly how challenging it can be in an increasingly global media market, where protections for journalists and definitions of libel and defamation vary from country to country — perhaps even more so for freelancers, lacking the institutional support enjoyed by staff writers.” WaPo (Gift Article): A reporter detailed a tennis star’s alleged abuse. Now he’s paying for it. “The accusations she shared with the journalist of emotional and physical abuse by Zverev — which he has repeatedly denied — cast a shadow over the player’s ascent, though he has faced no official repercussions. The resulting stories may have created more troubles for the writer himself.”