Is AI a threat to democracy? City Question Time returns with a panel of leading alumni journalists

Is AI a threat to democracy? City, University of London students grilled leading journalists on today’s media landscape, the future of journalism and the threats of AI to democracy at the second annual City Question Time.

Based on the longstanding BBC ‘Question Time’ TV series, the event was attended by 80 audience members made up of journalism students and City staff members who submitted questions the panel of alumni.

Hosted on campus on Tuesday 4 March, the event was moderated by James Ball, a City MA Investigative Journalism alumnus who received a Pulitzer Prize following his reporting on Wikileaks.

The panel was organised by Barney Jones, Visiting Professor of Journalism at City, former Editor of The Andrew Marr Show and of BBC Newsnight.

The panel of City journalism alumni was comprised of:

• Esme Wren, Editor for Channel 4 News
• Rosie Wright, Presenter on “Early Morning Breakfast” Times Radio
• Kamal Ahmed, Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder of The News Movement.

AI and fake news are a risk, and we need to protect democracy. The government needs to go further in its protection of public service broadcasters whose remit is to deliver independent, impartial news.

On Channel 4, all our content is viewed by a lawyer and a senior editor before publication to ensure no privacy issues, the footage and testament has to be compliant and not overly distressing for the viewer.

We don’t want to over-sanitise the news. We work to maintain the balance between making sure that the news is not distressing and maintains the respect and privacy of our contributors whilst not hiding the horrors of war from the viewer. This can be challenging when reporting on conflicts such as in Gaza.

The government needs to think carefully about generative AI.

The ecology of news is developing on digital networks – and this is a good thing – but it is important that these are controlled.

Platforms' ability to amplify or de-amplify the news at the push of a button is something that needs to be examined.

I don’t believe in a stale market owned by two or three players – which is why we launched our own media business, The News Movement.

Get involved in community and local issues. Connect these issues to your audience; it shows you care about what impacts people's lives.

Polite pestering and persistence is key.

Journalism is a service industry. I always prefer it when a journalist talks about the audience rather than themselves.

You’ll hear 'no' more often than you will hear 'yes' – this does not mean you wrote a bad pitch!

Journalism skills are becoming more porous and budding journalists should develop skills in audio, video and text.

We don’t know how AI is going to warp the newsroom but showing that human connection is still so important. Audiences still want a person to tell them a story.