A small-town Wyoming newspaper reporter resigned Friday after a reporter at a nearby newspaper exposed his apparent use of artificial intelligence in his reporting by ferreting out fabricated quotes in news stories.
An artificial intelligence (AI) ethics expert said the scandal has turned Wyoming into “ground zero” for AI ethics discussions in journalism.
Aaron Pelczar, 40, had written for publications but had not been a reporter before the Cody Enterprise hired him in June, Cody Enterprise editor Chris Bacon told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.
Pelczar resigned Friday, Aug. 2, after CJ Baker, a veteran reporter at neighboring paper the Powell Tribune, confronted him about irregularities in his stories that suggested artificial intelligence composition.
For example, Baker’s investigation into Pelczar’s work discovered quotes by Gov. Mark Gordon, a Wyoming Game and Fish official, a liquor store owner and others who had never spoken with Pelczar, Baker reported in Thursday’s edition of the Powell Tribune.
Baker had been noticing oddities in Pelczar’s reporting for weeks, but seeing quotes fabricated pushed him from merely talking about it in the newsroom to writing about it, he told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.
“Just because somebody’s using AI, I don’t know that that’s a news story. I don’t know that we’d have written about it,” said Baker, noting that some AI systems merely transcribe and summarize audio recordings, but that reporters can go back to those same recordings and fact-check the bot’s summary.
Baker said reporters and newspapers will disagree on how best to cover news, but writing about one another’s perceived shortcomings is counterproductive. Usually.
“But I think the cardinal rule every journalist agrees on is you don’t make stuff up — ever,” said Baker. “And that’s what prompted this.”
The Powell Tribune and Cody Enterprise are competitors, both serving and reporting on Park County, Wyoming.
Baker said that didn’t factor into his thinking as he approached this story.
“No, I don’t think (trying to harm one’s competitor) has any place in news coverage,” he said. “The Cody Enterprise is 100% a competitor, but that can never play into a news decision.”
Baker’s editor, Zac Taylor, agreed. He formerly served as the news editor of the Cody Enterprise, and said he feels for the paper’s staff, many of whom he knows well.
“I very much want to see them do well,” he said.
Cowboy State Daily was unable to reach Pelzcar by publication time. He did not return a Thursday morning message relayed to him by the Cody Enterprise, in which Cowboy State Daily requested comment.
Still Searching For The Fakes
As editor of the Cody Enterprise, Chris Bacon is still trying to figure out how many of the quotes were fabricated in Pelzcar’s stories, he told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday. He said he’s traced fabricated quotes as far back as July 8 so far, but is still searching.
The Enterprise was famously founded by Wild West showman William F. "Buffalo" Bill Cody in August 1899 and is marking its 125th anniversary as one of Wyoming's longtime legacy newspapers.
Bacon said he was unaware of any complaints about Pelczar fabricating quotes until Aug. 1, when the Powell Tribune and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department both contacted the paper.
The paper’s publisher, Megan Barton, posted an editorial online Wednesday, one day before Baker’s story published, titled “AI-generated stories not acceptable,” voicing surprise at the discovery and promises to learn and do better.
“We have to understand that AI is the new, advanced form of plagiarism and in the field of media and writing, plagiarism is something every media outlet has had to correct at some point or another,” wrote Barton.
She wrote that the company now has a system in place to catch AI-generated stories and will “hold our employees to a higher standard.”
The Enterprise also authored a correction this week, saying the following stories allowed AI to misquote sources:
• “Embezzlement scandal unfolds,” published July 31
• “Poacher convicted for illegal elk hunting,” published July 29
• “Watch rare double meteor shower,” published July 29
• “First female director of Wyoming G&F,” published July 8
It’s A First
Bacon said he’s never encountered an issue like this before, but that he’s only been the Enterprise editor since May 9. Before that he was a reporter for a short time, and he hired Pelczar to fill his own position in June.
Bacon spoke to the difficulty of running a local newspaper and finding experienced reporters in a small community. Still, he said, the paper can publish its twice-weekly editions without Pelczar, “for the time it takes to hire another reporter.”
He said he commends his remaining staff for working extra hours to make up the temporary loss. They are feeling “concerned and kind of offended professionally” over the incident, said Bacon.
Don’t Let It Hunt Down Facts
Central-Wyoming digital newspaper County10 has been using AI tools for a couple months, publisher Will Hill told Cowboy State Daily. But he said the outlet would not allow an AI system to go searching for its own facts.
He voiced surprise at the situation with the Cody Enterprise.
“I mean, AI is useful for what it is useful for, and that is compiling large amounts of information and distilling it down,” he said. “Once you give AI license to go find its own information, that’s where you get into trouble in journalism.”
Hill pointed to both the struggles of small-town journalism and the uniqueness of Fremont County, which has eight public school districts while most Wyoming counties have one or two.
It’s helpful to let an AI system summarize some of those school board and other local meetings, then have the reporter focus on interesting points in the summary, track them down in the recordings, fact-check them and write about them, he said.
“(The reporters) don’t have to watch a three-hour-long meeting in order to find the two or three, or one, stories the community really needs to know about from that meeting,” said Hill. “Our team has found it fantastic.”
Perfect Case Study
The County10 method and Pelczar’s reported method form the “perfect case study” of AI ethics in Wyoming, Alex Mahadevan, director of Media Wise at the Poynter Institute, told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.
Mahadevan spoke with Baker about the AI scandal at the Cody Enterprise as well, and said he’s followed the story with interest.
County10’s reported approach reflects an ethical way of increasing one’s coverage, and a technique in which some AI systems are currently competent. Pelczar’s reported method was not appropriate for journalism, Mahadevan said.
Mahadevan said he’s seen AI scandals throughout the news space, especially in the past two years as the systems became more layman-friendly. But he hasn’t seen quotes fabricated for news before the Cody incident, he added.
“I think we are living in very interesting times, and it’s pretty wild seeing, kind of, Wyoming be ground zero for such a big AI ethics scandal,” he said. “It’ll be really interesting to watch it play out.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
