ACROSS THE AIR Sky Sport News (left) is embracing the Ross Video ecosystem for its coverage
» Qvest and Dot Group are helping broadcasters to explore AI-driven transcription, metadata tagging and even automatic generation of highlight reels «
and distribute UHD content across multiple countries with 90% faster transfer times, significantly reducing live-to-air latency. “It’s not just about moving content from A to B,” Jardine adds, “once at its destination, it can be automated, transcoded and put on the air as quickly as possible.” By combining file transfer speed with workflow orchestration, Aspera and similar systems eliminate the bottlenecks that traditionally delayed news packages from reaching the air. In high-pressure news environments, these seconds matter – not just for competitiveness, but also credibility. The automation age The aforementioned use of automation, and with that AI tools, is also a critical component in keeping a modern newsroom functional. Both Qvest and Dot Group are helping broadcasters to explore AI-driven transcription, metadata tagging, fact- checking and even the automatic generation of highlight reels. “We’ve helped major media organisations set up AI councils,” Day explains, “so that every use case is approved before adoption. There is strong support for AI optimising back-end processes like searchability and translation, but creative content is still approached cautiously.”
Jardine sees similar opportunities in orchestration and compliance. “Watson Speech-to-Text offers real-time or batch transcription of news footage,” he describes. “Watson Natural Language Understanding allows tagging, categorisation and summary of news content, while Watsonx.ai enables the building of newsroom-specific AI models for recommendation engines, content moderation and more.” These tools can dramatically reduce the manual workload for journalists, freeing them up to focus on storytelling rather than repetitive tasks. But both Day and Pogacean stress that technology alone won’t define the newsroom of the future. “AI can’t be ignored,” warns Pogacean. “It’s certainly a buzzword in technology and production at the moment, and it can serve real benefits – but AI should be thought of as an assistant – an accelerator of workflows – not a replacement. “In a newsroom, AI will likely become more and more beneficial for streamlining repetitive tasks, so we’ll use it where it makes sense. For a journalist, that might mean suggestions for graphics or the right image for a person, as well as support for adapting visuals across different aspect ratios with accuracy.”
The success of these systems also depends on how well they’re integrated into workflows and how thoughtfully leadership manages the cultural change. “If you go into it from an upgrading technology perspective only, it will fail,” Day cautions. “You need to still have empathy for the people you’re working with.” The disinformation dilemma Few issues weigh heavier on a 21st-century newsroom than disinformation. It isn’t just the occasional doctored photo or misleading claim, but an entire information ecosystem where falsehoods can spread faster than truth and AI makes fakery sobering. Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report, which is one of the most comprehensive surveys of global media audiences, found that concern about ‘false and misleading information online’ had risen to 72% in the US and 81% in South Africa. It found that worry spikes during elections, when the stakes are highest and trust is thinnest. At the same time, audiences are drifting further from traditional outlets. TikTok, for example, has indistinguishable from fact. The scale of the problem is
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