Crux response to AI generated complaints from Barry Bruce and Justin Wright
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Analysis/Opinion.
Crux was warned by one of our readers in Arrowtown in October that we "had a target on our backs" as it became clear that the local body elections had not gone according to plan for some existing councillors and the former Mayor.
We then received a very large number of formal complaints, apparently all AI/ChatGPT generated, in the names of former Wānaka councillor Barry Bruce and an Arrowtown architect, Justin Wright.
The thrust of all the complaints was that Crux had somehow breached most if not all of the Media Council's eleven core principles. The complaints ran to many pages and in the view of Crux made little sense - partly because they seemed to be AI generated and attempted to mention as many potential breaches as possible.
Nevertheless, Crux respects the Media Council and values our membership of that body. The thrust of their rulings today is that the modern use of "analysis" at the top of an article does not mean the same as "opinion." In our view this is a nuanced point of view but we will from now on clearly mark all such articles "Analysis/Opinion."
The second offshoot of this ruling by the Media Council is that in our analysis pieces Crux did not present line by line evidence to support what we were saying or give the other party a chance to comment.
Here we find fault with the Media Council ruling to the extent that Crux readers are 99% returning readers (according to Google analytics) who have read our previous coverage. For us to re-state that content, in every story we publish, would need 10 - 20 links and, in our view, an onerous amount of repetition. The Media Council seems to be applying standards here that would apply to a metropolitan newspaper or national website like Stuff or the Herald, with an audience that changes every day, rather than to a hyper-local digital news platform like Crux.
We also have on many occasions approached various QLDC councillors, including Mr Barry Bruce and Lisa Guy, for comment and in return either received nothing or received comments not connected with our questions. The Media Council mistakenly assumes that all of QLDC's 2022 - 2025 councillors would provide prompt or relevant replies - we have sadly found that not to be the case.
As to the Media Council's view that the articles authored by Councillor Niki Gladding and Queenstown Lakes Community Action's (QLCA) Nikki McFarlane should have been challenged and fact checked - we simply don't understand why that would be necessary since Councillor Gladding is a trusted and well known source to Crux - with her opinions clearly identified as such in the article (and backed up by multiple previous articles), and the QLCA article included links to the full spreadsheet used to analyse "who said what" during what turned out to be quite an abusive election campaign.
The article that resulted from Mr Bruce falsely accusing current mayor John Glover of not being paid through the correct channels for his Shaping our Future work remains in our view fair and self evident in the stating both Mr Bruce's accusation and the response from John Glover. Numerous sources then confirmed that Mr Bruce as a former Shaping Our Future director would have known his accusation against Mr Glover was not true.
We have no idea as to why Mr Justin Wright of Arrowtown chose to use what appears to be the same AI/ChatGPT source and prompts as Mr Barry Bruce. The connection between these parties can only be the subject of speculation and that's speculation that we are not prepared to make given the clear appetite of these people for more formal complaints.
We wish them both (or all of them) a very Merry Christmas.
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