Pink slime journalism is a term that refers to websites that masquerade as genuine local news sites, all the while pushing a specific political agenda. While the information in pink slime stories can be accurate, it often carries significant bias and doesn’t qualify as real journalism.
Like other forms of AI slop and misinformation, pink slime is on the rise, which is troubling because it can be more subtle and difficult to spot than more direct falsehoods. For instance, as part of recent research at Yale University, participants were shown AI-generated news sites and real, legitimate news sites, and asked which they would prefer to get their news from. Just under half of the participants preferred the pink slime sites.
That research, as well as general common sense, highlights why identifying pink slime is so important and can be somewhat tricky. As a journalist and professor of journalism, here are some of the key ways I advise students and anyone else to avoid falling for pink slime.
Keep An Eye Out For AI
First and foremost, we all need to hone our inherent AI detection abilities. I’ve written about this from the teaching perspective, but these days I see AI writing everywhere–in the comment section of Facebook Groups, in emails, and in Instagram summaries.
After reading a sentence or paragraph, it’s important to ask yourself if it sounds as if a real person would’ve written it. For example, is there an unusual amount of repetition, or is it riddled with clichés?
Then, whenever you detect the lifeless, cold voice of AI, remember to stop and take a look at how accurate that information is, particularly when reading a news story.
Follow Old-Fashioned Digital Literacy
One of my favorite memes features a quote that reads “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet,” and then attributes it to Abraham Lincoln. It’s a witty reminder that it’s easy to just make something up and post.
While things such as the quality of writing can cue us that something is off, that’s not always an indicator. Well-written pink slime can easily get past us, so checking the background of a site’s publisher, especially one with whom we are not familiar, is a key part of consuming news these days.
Follow Even More Old-Fashioned General News Literacy Practices
Going a step further, we need to get back to even older-fashioned digital literacy questions that we ask students to consider as part of building critical thinking skills: Who is writing this? What perspectives were left out? Was that because the writer didn’t have time, or are they trying to support a particular agenda?
If students stumble onto a new news site, we should encourage them to always look at the “About Us” section to assess who is writing the article, what sources they are providing for their information, and whether the article itself seems to be trying to convince us of something. If these details are not included anywhere that’s easy to access on the site, that’s a red flag.
This type of objective interrogation helps you realize when you’re reading pink slime, and can also make you a more critical and thoughtful reader of more legitimate news sites as well.
Remember Your Cybersecurity Training
Another way to avoid pink slime is to think about what you read in posts and from unknown sites the same way you would think of emails and spam calls or texts from people you don’t know. I get emails from people I don’t know all the time, and while I don’t automatically dismiss these, I view any with a healthy dose of skepticism, particularly if it is political in nature in any way and/or makes bold claims on any topic.
Mandatory cybersecurity trainings over the years have made many of us wary of the potential of being tricked and taken advantage of through digital communication. We need to expand that wariness to everything we read online, and remember that old email security adage: If something feels off, it probably is.