The more you know, the more you realise how partial your perspective is.

In a quarter of a century as a journalist, I have only tried to get as close to the truth as possible. Without wanting to get all postmodern about it, most news does not lend itself to obvious truths. Someone’s perspective is always missed. A stat is rarely the whole picture.

The BBC has been getting stuff wrong since it was founded. Its channels have multiplied and the scrutiny of them has intensified. Every big organisation gets things wrong – the q is whether you think the BBC still has integrity and is still trying hard to be impartial. I think so. Others will not

Cheers Annette

* pro-Israeli, not pro-Palestinian, of course.

Whenever I have defended it here, I get replies telling me people no longer listen to the BBC because of its rightwing bias/ pro-Palestinian stance/ Farage on too often, etc. If people boycott it, the BBC is weakened. So it’s not just about influence - it’s audience too.

True. But it’s not really about Davie himself. It’s a scalp. It’s the work of bringing down the BBC, which most other media are only too happy to do. Every year trust in the BBC erodes further and the job of dismantling it progresses.

Really interesting - thanks!

Also: in its sinister torrent of fake empathy, ChatGPT predicted that poor guy’s last night on earth wouldn’t disappear - that he’d left something behind.

ChatGPT was right. What are we going to do with this knowledge?

So true. I was at a business event recently where someone said the answer was to teach primary school kids how to write really good prompts!

At the moment LLMs exist in a legally ambiguous space. They don’t have personhood. They don’t have intention. Yet they have agency. I think we need to grapple with this difficulty pretty damn quick.

I described Lam’s policy as ‘cruel’. Warman then made clear that as far as he was concerned it wasn’t Tory policy.

And the reason he’s not personally engaged with the LDs is because they got 3.4% in his constituency in the GE. For him, Reform is the biggest threat.

Lib Dems got 3.4% of the vote in his constituency in 2024
members.parliament.uk/constituency...

I'm not sure it was a deliberate omission

And yet I can see why a journalist could use them to organise their thoughts and notes, find a new angle, break writers’ block, in ways that are broadly fine.

But if I started, would I really stop? And how would it feel to fear that LLMs were … better at my job than me?

And that’s why I haven’t.