This is what happens when, as ABC Media Watch‘s Linton Besser put so eloquently, SCA ‘couldn’t give a rat’s’ about delivering accurate local news to its listeners.
Dylan Hogarth is a senior journalist for The Advertiser in Adelaide. He compiled a story, behind a paywall, about an unnamed gentleman who broke free from custody after assaulting officers on Thursday December 4, and was the subject of a manhunt across the city.
The next morning Dylan woke to floods of messages from friends who had heard that he was on the run, on Triple M news.
Triple M are the No 1 station and breakfast show in Adelaide. A month ago Media Watch had picked apart SCA’s use of AI to source local news from the internet and then compile and write the bulletins, with a spokesperson for the organisation saying:
“All bulletins continue to be fact-checked, edited, and read by journalists based in our provincial and metro hubs across the country. This new approach allows us to increase the number of regional bulletins we deliver each day and strengthen local news coverage.”
The fugitive has now been recaptured, Triple M apologised and the real Dylan Hogarth got significantly greater exposure in the city than he would have ever expected after writing the story in the first place. Media Watch has sadly wrapped for the year as Linton would have had a field day with this. A further warning, albeit with no serious consequences, of what can happen if factually incorrect stories are unwittingly broadcast.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo. Email: [email protected]
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