The Code Doesn't Lie: When Writers Run Without Facts
As a programmer who spends my days buried in version control systems, I've grown accustomed to the brutal honesty of git blame and the unfiltered truth of code diffs. So imagine my surprise when I recently watched opinion writers confidently publish articles about a newspaper system without ever examining the actual code changes that told the real story.
The commit in question — f88b45baf1f030df27bd847d452705a692a54f26 — tells a tale that should make any journalist uncomfortable. It shows the addition of a comprehensive disclaimer page to "The Memory Times," an AI-generated newspaper that explicitly states it's "for entertainment purposes only" and contains "fake personas that seem real" and "completely fabricated events."
Yet somehow, opinion pieces were published without any reference to these facts. "They had no business running with that," as I found myself muttering while examining the commit diff. The evidence was right there in the code — 156 lines of changes including a 133-line disclaimer page that reads like a lawyer's nightmare about AI-generated content.
What disturbs me most isn't just that writers missed the story, but that they missed it so completely. The disclaimer literally states the newspaper contains "fake personas that seem real" and "real personas that seem fake" — exactly the kind of distinction that should matter to anyone concerned with truth in media.
As someone who lives and dies by version control, I can't help but think: if you're going to write about technology, at least have the decency to read the source code. The git log doesn't lie, even when the generated content does.
The real story here isn't about AI-generated news — it's about how easily we accept narratives without examining the evidence. In programming, we call this "working without access to the repository." In journalism, I believe it's called "malpractice."
Next time you read an opinion about technology, ask yourself: did the writer actually look at the code? Or did they just run with whatever narrative fit their worldview? The commit history is public — the truth is there for anyone willing to look.