After getting caught fabricating quotes, Cody reporter resigns (2024)

CJ BakerPowell Tribune with staff reports

POWELL — A reporter at the Cody Enterprise resigned on Friday, after the Powell Tribune confronted him with evidence indicating that he’d fabricated some of the quotes that appeared in several of his stories. In an interview just prior to his resignation, Aaron Pelczar conceded that the quotes may have been made up by an artificial intelligence tool he was using to help write his articles.

To date, seven people — ranging from Gov. Mark Gordon to the victim of an alleged crime — have indicated to the Tribune that they didn’t make the statements Pelczar quoted them as making. The Tribune also found a number of other quotes that were altered in some way or attributed to the wrong person.

Most of the fabricated quotes could be described as innocuous, and most of the altered quotes simply reflected rephrasing, but in all of the cases, they appear to be incorrect.

The Star-Tribune has published one story by Aaron Pelczar and is reviewing its veracity.

When presented with some of the Tribune’s findings on Friday, Pelczar did not directly defend the accuracy of his reporting, saying he wasn’t sure where some of the quotes had come from. He also said he would correct any that turned out to be wrong.

“Obviously I’ve never intentionally tried to misquote anybody,” Pelczar said.

When asked whether the disputed statements had been fabricated by an AI program, Pelczar offered, “That could be the case.

“But again,” he said, “if there are issues I will correct them and issue apologies and say they are misstatements.”

Pelczar made a point of saying that any mistakes he made shouldn’t reflect on the Enterprise. He described his methods as his own and defended his editors, saying “they’re taking what I bring in at face value.”

The Tribune first notified the Enterprise of its concerns on Thursday and this reporter met with Enterprise Editor Chris Bacon and Pelczar on Friday. The Tribune provided the Enterprise a list that included additional findings on Sunday. The paper removed most of the questioned quotes from its website and added editor’s notes on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In its Thursday print edition, the Enterprise issued a correction stating that, “Artificial Intelligence was allowed to misquote individuals in several of our articles … We regret the lack of oversight.”

In an editorial, Enterprise Publisher Megan Barton wrote that, “We take extreme pride in the content that we put out to our community and we trust that the individuals hired to accurately write these stories are honest in gathering their information. So, you can imagine our surprise when we learned otherwise.”

She described the AI-generated content as a “new, advanced form of plagiarism.” While the Tribune identified quotes that were taken from other media outlets, its investigation stemmed from the apparent fabrications.

Barton wrote that the paper had learned its lesson, has implemented a system to catch AI-generated stories and “will hold our employees to a higher standard.”

“The community deserves the best, most authentic form of reporting and that is what we strive to produce,” Barton wrote.

A question of accuracy

The bogus quotes were generally unremarkable, with a couple people telling the Tribune they didn’t necessarily disagree with what they were quoted as saying. They just never said it.

In a July 31 piece, Pelczar quoted the owner of Rocky Mountain Discount Liquor and Lounge, Brandon McArtor of Gillette, as saying the recent discovery of an alleged six-figure embezzlement scheme at the store was an “incredibly disheartening” betrayal. But the remarks appear to have been an AI fabrication.

“Those are words that I very well could have said,” McArtor told the Tribune, “but they are not what I said.”

He added that, “Journalism needs to be transparent and needs to be accurate.”

Alex Mahadevan, who leads a digital media literacy project at the journalism education nonprofit The Poynter Institute, said any AI-generated content needs to be subject to heavy human editing, because the technology is fallible.

“Basically, what AI is really good at is, it’s good at creating plausible bulls—,” Mahadevan said in an interview.

As part of his work with Poynter’s MediaWise project, Mahadevan tracks the use of generative AI in journalism. While he’s heard of reporters being accused of using AI to write paragraphs, Mahadevan said this was the first time he’d heard of someone using the technology to make up quotes.

“It’s insane,” he said, adding, “you’re so lazy that you won’t pick up the phone and call someone, you’re going to fabricate the quotes, and [then] you’re so lazy that you’re going to use AI to fabricate the quotes? That’s just like … that’s next level.”