Nigerian newsroom leaders convene to co-create AI-disclosure standard for journalism

Senior journalists and editors from Nigeria’s leading news organisations gathered at the United States Consulate General in Lagos on Monday to begin building a shared standard for how newsrooms disclose their use of artificial intelligence to audiences.

The co-design workshop, convened by Oluwamayowa Tijani, an alumnus of the United States’ International Visitors Leadership Program, brought together newsroom leaders across print, digital, television, and radio to tackle one of the most pressing credibility questions facing journalism today: not whether newsrooms use AI, but how honestly and clearly they tell their audiences about it.

The session drew on almost three years of research into AI adoption in Nigerian newsrooms, which surfaced what Tijani calls a “transparency paradox”.According to Tijani, while an overwhelming majority of journalists across Nigerian newsrooms believe AI use should be disclosed, very few do so consistently.

“Journalists do not consistently disclose use of AI for three major reasons: First, is the materiality threshold; journalists often question what is material enough to be disclosed as AI use?” Tijani said.

“The second is an articulation problem: how do journalists capture what AI has done clearly enough for the audience to understand, and the third is anticipated audience stigma, how do we ensure that our audiences do not lose trust in us when we say we have used AI?”

He added that his research with news audiences found that Nigerian news consumers do not necessarily lose trust when a newsroom discloses AI use, provided the disclosure is specific and clear about what the AI actually did and what remained in human hands.

Delivering remarks at the workshop, Julie McKay, U.S. Consulate Public Affairs Officer, noted that the United States leads the world in AI, powered by the innovation and excellence of U.S. companies, universities, researchers, and entrepreneurs.

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