Press Gazette’s investigation into fake experts being widely quoted in the national press has prompted a huge reaction from the PR industry.
Meanwhile various publishers are understood to be reviewing content and policies in the wake of the story, and the BBC has removed one article altogether from its archive.
One national publisher has called all its freelance contributors alerting them to the dangers raised by the Press Gazette piece.
‘If media don’t have time to validate that sources are real we’re in trouble’
Numerous PR professionals have spoken out on LinkedIn and other platforms worried that genuine expert voices are being drowned out by potentially AI-generated comments from experts who do not even exist and who are exploiting security flaws in online journalist-request services.
Freelance writer and content strategist Taylor Cromwell said: “I’ve noticed a steep rise in AI responses in my Qwoted pitch calls and am constantly trying to weed out legitimate sources. I hope the platforms crack down on this, but this is also a good reminder to resort back to journalism 101 and get on the phone with sources.”
Managing director of LarkHill PR Niki Hutchinson said: “We’re drowning in AI white papers and comments but this is one of the discussions the journo and PR (and wider marketing) communities need to be having. Aside from providing media comments, only last week we were debating as a team who would be the first publication to openly share the fact they’d received an identical ‘thought leadership’ piece from an organisation.”
PR professional and mediator Brian Ahearne said: “It’s far too easy for anyone to set themselves up as a ‘guru’ with no creds whatsoever, and for journalists to quote those people simply because they need talking heads, ‘balance’, or some controversy in their articles.
“Credentials, reliable evidence, primary research or experience can be severely lacking. Obviously it’d be great if journalists could be more rigorous in requesting such creds on every article – albeit tedious and time-consuming. But at least the comment-providing services should ensure those touting themselves as experts have some certificates, evidence or something that means they can be trusted as experts.”
Chief commercial officer for PR firm Atrium Matt Phillips said: “Another example of why the hollowing out of commercial media is a bad thing for democracy… if media don’t have time to validate that sources are real we’re in trouble.”
PR Rebecca Attwood said: “As a PR trying to get clients into the reputable outlets you’ve mentioned in the piece, it is so frustrating. It’s hard enough as it is to get clients quoted, we’re now up against fake people too.”
News industry professionals have also expressed concern about the story.
Charlie Beckett, director of the journalism AI project at the London School of Economics, said: “This goes beyond the fake sources, tbh. Many ‘experts’ are quoted when they have no expertise.”
And former Daily Mirror special correspondent Tom Parry said: “It’s a reminder why the old-school method of picking up a phone and talking to someone, or better still talking to them face to face, remains the most failsafe method of guaranteeing the validity of an expert.”
Journalist Cate Lawrence said the problem went back further, and that she believed a now-defunct journalist-requests service had employed freelance writers to draft responses on its platform.
She said: “I lost my respect when I saw them offering a job looking for journalists to write the responses to submission questions.”
Meanwhile, cybersecurity author and IT Professional D Greg Scott said: “Falling for fake expert quotes is lazy journalism. Even in this era of AI and deepfakes, there will never be a substitute for good old-fashioned human judgment to sniff this stuff out. It’s on journalists to make sure the quotes they use are real. What’s the sense in even writing articles if you rely on a bunch of automation for your quotes?
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