CNET's staff is unionizing with the Writers Guild of America, East today as concerns of AI content, a general lack of transparency, and the ramifications of layoffs rock the company internally. The newly formed CNET Media Workers Union seeks to represent approximately 100 workers at the publication.
The union, The Verge reports, has been in the works for a significant period of time but really gained steam in January of this year when CNET was caught generating articles with AI and not disclosing it. These articles frequently had obvious errors and falsehoods and were of generally abysmal quality—more than half of them were retroactively corrected after CNET halted the use of AI in March. The resulting firestorm around the AI article matter was vicious externally but also had significant ramifications inside the company—the "details of the AI tools being used by Red Ventures were not widely known even internally" according to the piece and the revelations have clearly struck a nerve with the publication's remaining staff. (The team which was most heavily affected by those tools, CNET's Money section, will notably be covered in full by the bargaining unit of CNET Media Worker's Union.)
Other serious issues have characterized CNET as it currently exists, most prominently a lack of editorial independence that left a black mark on the publication's already questionable reputation. Corporate restructuring has also been a problem. Layoffs hit the company in March of this year, with a dozen workers—10% of the staff at the site—being ousted to "cut costs" and "simplify operations." It's no surprise that in such a disastrous and toxic culture that the remaining employees of the site have had enough. As they put it:
We face a lack of transparency and accountability from management around performance evaluations, sponsored content and plans for artificial intelligence. We are concerned about the blurring of editorial and monetization strategies. [...] We feel that a union is the only way to guarantee job protections, defend editorial integrity and ensure standard cost-of-living raises as well as fair severance packages. A union would give us a voice on new AI and marketing initiatives and allow us to safeguard our workloads, bylines and careers.
CNET has not responded to the effort at time of writing.