Jessica Wiederhorn is holding the news to its own ethics code
Jessica Wiederhorn, AI in Journalism, Prospecting, and Visualization · Published November 9, 2026
Jessica Wiederhorn founded The Media Integrity Project, launched the Humanity in Journalism podcast this fall, and is putting ReporterLens, an AI tool that reads news articles for sourcing and framing, in front of working journalists.
Jessica Wiederhorn spends a lot of time thinking about what happens after a story runs. She's the founder of The Media Integrity Project, which looks at how news is crafted by a journalist, read by an audience, and felt by the person or organization it's about.
Her clearest point of view shows up in a single line: "Journalists have to get coverage right. It's not enough to regurgitate." Her test for readers is simple. Is the article just repeating what someone said, or has someone done the work to confirm the facts?
ReporterLens
That question is what ReporterLens is built to answer. The tool analyzes news articles by breaking down sourcing, evidence, and narrative framing, and shows how a piece lines up with the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. It's free, there's no login, and as Jessica put it, you can find out "in 20 seconds." She built it with Replit.
"One of the strongest fundamentals of journalism and what ReporterLens measures is the verification of facts," she wrote. In October she took it straight to the people it's meant for. "Excited to meet journalists and share our ReporterLens tool this week in Columbus," she posted from the SPJ convention. You can try it at reporterlens.app.
Humanity in Journalism
Jessica spent the summer on a second project. "This is a project I've been working on all summer… Humanity in Journalism podcast launched this morning with 2 episodes!" she wrote on launch day.
The show is for journalists, for people who have found themselves the subject of a story, and for anyone curious how news gets made and what it does after it's published. Her first guest was Danny Klein, VP Editor of FSR and QSR magazines, talking about framing and what stays in or out of a story. One of her favorite things about him is that he manually transcribes his interviews so he doesn't miss a thing.
We need more Dannys!
Later episodes brought in Dan Axelrod, chair of the SPJ Ethics Committee, to walk through the first update to the SPJ Code of Ethics since 2014, including new standards on AI and technology verification and presumption of innocence in criminal coverage. Another looked at how news coverage can contribute to debanking. The most recent episode features a woman changing up investigative journalism. New episodes come out every couple of weeks on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Jessica describes herself as a media integrity advocate, investor, and award-winning business development and non-profit executive. She also just joined Willa. In her words: "I'm always interested in the intersection of women and technology and what creativity that can bring. Willa takes this to the next level with AI."
Tools used
- Replit
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