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<\/p>\nMira Lowe
\n\u00a0|\u00a0 Your Turn<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Iowa lawyers warn AI chats can be discovered<\/p>\n
Iowa lawyers caution against sharing personal details with AI chatbots in legal cases, as conversations can be uncovered by the opposing side.<\/p>\n
Journalism schools are teaching ethics and accountability regarding AI, not fear of the future.Students are taught to use AI as an aid for tasks like research and idea generation, not as a substitute for human judgment.Journalism programs aim to produce graduates who can critically evaluate AI tools for bias, accuracy, and privacy implications.<\/p>\n
There is an ongoing national conversation about whether journalism schools are keeping pace with the rapid integration of artificial intelligence in newsrooms. An editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer recently argued that journalism schools are \u201cteaching fear of the future,\u201d pointing to students who question newsrooms that rely on AI. He concludes that higher\u2011ed programs are lagging behind industry needs. I value the concern, but that narrative misreads what responsible journalism education does.<\/p>\n
At Florida A&M University\u2019s School of Journalism & Graphic Communication (SJGC), we don\u2019t teach fear. We teach ethics, skepticism and accountability \u2014 the very capacities that uphold journalism\u2019s integrity and its essential role in society.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what that looks like on our campus.<\/p>\n
We ground everything in fundamentals. Verification, research and reporting are nonnegotiable. Students produce work across platforms and deadlines that mirror real newsrooms. We layer in emerging tools not as tricks, but as transparent processes that require source evaluation, documentation and disclosure. AI may assist the work, but it never substitutes for human judgment.<\/p>\n
We treat AI as interdisciplinary literacy. Journalism now intersects with data, design and public policy, and our graduates must be fluent not only in the tools but in their civic implications \u2014 bias, privacy, labor, environmental impact, information integrity and the expanding reach of algorithmic systems. That isn\u2019t technophobia. It\u2019s responsible preparation for a world where technology shapes everyday life.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re hands-on in the classroom. We use Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT and other generative AI assistants to support idea generation, structure testing and analysis \u2014 always under instructor-set guardrails. We train students to use AI as an aid, teaching them to trace sources, challenge outputs and spot hallucinations. We teach research with Perplexity AI to surface sources and citations quickly while evaluating credibility.<\/p>\n
And we model what we expect. This fall, we convened \u201cAI in Action: Leveraging Technology in Teaching, Research & Workflow,\u201d a faculty-staff retreat focused on using AI responsibly in curricula, scholarship and operations. When faculty build fluency, students benefit \u2014 and the profession gains colleagues who can tell substance from hype.<\/p>\n
So, are journalism schools lagging? The truth is more complex. Technology is moving quickly, and ethical frameworks are still taking shape \u2014 even inside newsrooms. Universities shouldn\u2019t be tool-chasers. They should be standard-bearers. Our responsibility is to instill analytical habits so graduates can evaluate any new system they encounter. That\u2019s how we future-proof journalists.<\/p>\n
A recent article by Poynter.org<\/a>, suggests that journalism students are more skeptical of AI than we think. There\u2019s no evidence that journalism students who question AI are hurting their chances at jobs or internships. In fact, reporting from Poynter and others shows their skepticism mirrors the concerns inside newsrooms themselves about accuracy, bias, transparency, and trust. Employers increasingly want journalists who can evaluate AI, not blindly adopt it.<\/p>\n When students raise questions about AI \u2014 about accuracy, ethics and accountability \u2014 I see something promising. I see young reporters exercising the very instincts that strengthen public-interest journalism. Those aren\u2019t signs of fear. They\u2019re signs of readiness.<\/p>\n My invitation to newsroom leaders across the country is simple: partner with us. Tell us what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not. Co-develop transparency norms. Pilot AI workflows with our students in internships and capstones. You\u2019ll meet graduates who are tech-literate, ethically grounded and ready to lead.<\/p>\n Students aren\u2019t afraid of the future. They\u2019re eager to shape it with curiosity, courage and care. Our responsibility, in both classrooms and newsrooms, is to ensure the tools we adopt strengthen the public\u2019s trust. That\u2019s not fear. That\u2019s journalism.<\/p>\n Mira Lowe is dean of the School of Journalism & Graphic Communication at Florida A&M University.<\/p>\n JOIN THE CONVERSATION<\/p>\n Send letters to the editor (up to 200 words) or Your Turn columns ( 500-550 words) to\u00a0letters@tallahassee.com<\/a>. Please include your address for verification purposes only, and if you send a Your Turn, also include a photo and 1-2 line bio of yourself. You can also submit anonymous Zing!s at\u00a0Tallahassee.com\/Zing.<\/a>\u00a0Submissions are published on a space-available basis. All submissions may be edited for content, clarity and length, and may also be published by any part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mira Lowe \u00a0|\u00a0 Your Turn Iowa lawyers warn AI chats can be discovered Iowa lawyers caution against sharing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,601,25,580,1180,1192,594,1528,593,206,599,598,624,772,66,607,777,592,622,600,1181],"class_list":{"0":"post-4739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-chatgpt","12":"tag-colleges","13":"tag-colleges-u0026-universities","14":"tag-enabled","15":"tag-ethics","16":"tag-highlights","17":"tag-intelligence","18":"tag-learning","19":"tag-machine","20":"tag-machine-learning-u0026-artificial-intelligence","21":"tag-neutral","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-overall","24":"tag-overall-neutral","25":"tag-story","26":"tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","27":"tag-u0026","28":"tag-universities"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}