You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Artificial intelligence can help identify biases in news reporting that we wouldn't otherwise see, researchers report. For a new study, researchers got a computer program to generate news coverage of COVID-19 using headlines from Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) articles as prompts. They then compared the simulated news coverage to the actual reporting at the time. The findings show that CBC coverage was less focused on the medical emergency and more positively focused on personalities and geo-politics.

AI can help identify biases in news reporting that we wouldn't otherwise see. Researchers from McGill University have recently directed a computer program to generate news coverage of COVID-19 using headlines from CBC articles as prompts. They then compared the simulated news coverage to the actual reporting at the time and found that CBC coverage was less focused on the medical emergency and more positively focused on personalities and geo-politics. "Reporting on real-world events requires complex choices, including decisions about which events and players take center stage. By comparing what was reported with what could have been reported, our study provides perspective on the editorial choices made by news agencies," says Professor Andrew Piper of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University.