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The general interest news publisher The Messenger, which launched in May with an ambitious vision for its reach and revenue, has penned a multiyear, multimillion-dollar partnership with the artificial intelligence company Seekr, according to president Richard Beckman.
Among other elements of the deal, The Messenger will gain access to a proprietary tool built by Seekr that helps journalists eliminate bias in their reporting by flagging instances of clickbait, subjectivity or personal opinion.
The Messenger has sought, from its launch, to position itself as a source of unbiased reporting in an otherwise partisan media landscape, and its partnership with Seekr is a further extension of this thesis, according to Beckman.
“We launched The Messenger with the mission of removing partisanship from the news, and Seekr uses AI to evaluate the transparency of content,” Beckman said. “The alignment was perfect.”
The strategy also has a commercial purpose: By avoiding the appearance of political preference, The Messenger hopes to court advertisers looking to reach consumers from across the ideological spectrum.
The partnership reflects one of the many ways in which publishers, including The Atlantic, Politico and G/O Media, have begun implementing AI into their editorial and commercial operations.
While the technology has captured headlines, the use of sophisticated algorithms to evaluate the quality of content is not a new concept, according to Vanessa Otero, the founder and chief executive of Ad Fontes Media.
Advertiser concerns over brand safety, combined with the scale of the open web, have led to the creation of dozens of companies promising to verify, evaluate or otherwise assure brands that their ads have appeared as intended.
The technology powering these efforts, while continuously improving, routinely makes mistakes, and even the most advanced AI is far from foolproof.
The Messenger courts advertisers with centrism
The proprietary Seekr technology will be available to The Messenger staff in their content management system, though reporters will not be required to use the tool, according to Beckman.
If elements of a story contain indications of bias, such as inadequate sourcing, the filter will flag the issue and provide editors an opportunity to adjust it.
Stories published using the tool will receive a score reflecting their political lean and reliability that will be visible to readers, according to Seekr chief executive Pat Condo.