There may be some doubt about whether One Nation has raised more than $2.7m in its Fire the Liar fundraising appeal this week but there is no doubt that the Daily Telegraph handed Pauline Hanson’s party coverage amounting to free front-page advertising.

As the fundraising drive kicked off at 6am on Wednesday, we couldn’t help but notice the Sydney tabloid’s front page. The valuable real estate screamed “Fighting Liar with Fire: One Nation fires back at Labor with $29 campaign fee”, and reproduced both Labor’s ad to supporters and Hanson’s.

Inside, on page six, the newspaper published a large One Nation ad that said: “Stop Labor. Fire the Liar. Donate Now.”

“One Nation has returned serve on Labor’s plea to supporters to donate $27 each to help fight Pauline Hanson’s party, with its own push seeking $29 donations in its bid to ‘Fire the Liar’,” the article said. “One Nation promises to use the funds on billboards, TV and radio ads to oust Labor from government.”

According to a tracker on its website, One Nation claims it has raised more than $2.7m in a donation drive aimed at targeting Labor seats. But that figure is unverified as the party does not disclose its donations in real time and the website provides no details of purported donations.

Full-page coverage of the fundraising continued throughout the week, with headlines including: “Orange flood of cash as Pauline’s People rise up.”

The prime minister had the same reaction to the tabloid’s front page as we did, saying on Thursday that One Nation “had an ad for their fundraising campaign, effectively, free ad in one of the mainstream publications”.

Artificial invention strikes again

The Nine newspapers had another run in with AI this week, publishing a graphic about the South Australian election in the Australian Financial Review that invented several political parties.

Last week the Sydney Morning Herald removed an “unacceptable” opinion piece written by an academic after the AI-detector service Pangram tagged it as AI-generated. The company sent out an email reminding contributors artificial intelligence must not be used to write stories for publication and they must disclose to editors if any AI........

© The Guardian