Digital Digging × AI Training for TV 2 Journalists
Document analysis and honest feedback
Claude is built differently from ChatGPT. Where ChatGPT optimizes for being helpful and agreeable, Claude optimizes for being honest and careful. For journalists, that distinction matters. Claude excels at document analysis -- upload a 100-page report and it will extract claims, find contradictions, and cite page numbers. It follows complex, multi-step instructions precisely. It refuses to fabricate sources or invent quotes. When it doesn't know something, it says so -- often before you even ask.
These exercises are designed to help you discover what Claude is genuinely good at and where its limits are. You will learn to write prompts that get consistent, verifiable results. You will test Claude's honesty against other tools. You will build reusable templates for your beat.
Claude's strengths
Claude's weaknesses
Exercises 1 – 6
Core skills. Every journalist should master these before moving on.
What you will learn
How to use Claude as a first-pass analysis tool -- and how to force it to reveal what it missed on the first attempt.
What to watch for
Claude's self-critique is often more useful than its initial analysis. The second round typically catches assumptions, missing stakeholders, and alternative interpretations. But it can also overcorrect -- not every hedge in round two is valid.
TV 2 connection: Core skill for everyone in the newsroom. Start here regardless of your experience level.
What you will learn
How to create a reusable style profile so Claude writes in your voice rather than its own.
What to watch for
Claude tends to describe style well but imitate it imperfectly. It often smooths out the rough edges that make your writing distinctive. The style profile is still useful -- not for having Claude write your articles, but for maintaining consistency in templates, summaries, and drafts you will rewrite.
TV 2 connection: Emil Gjerding Nielson (8) -- already exploring editorial AI and writing. This exercise gives him a concrete method for maintaining voice consistency across AI-assisted drafts.
What you will learn
How Claude handles the boundaries of its knowledge -- and how that compares to other AI tools.
What to watch for
Claude is generally more honest about its limitations but can sometimes be overly cautious, hedging even on things it does know. ChatGPT may sound confident while being wrong -- which is more dangerous for journalism. Neither tool should be trusted without verification.
TV 2 connection: Christian Jessen (9) -- skeptical of AI, which is exactly the right instinct. This exercise validates his skepticism with evidence. Lars Apel (7) -- has trust issues with AI tools; this gives him a framework for testing that trust.
What you will learn
How to get verifiable summaries -- where every claim links back to a specific location in the source document.
What to watch for
Claude is good at this but not perfect. Page numbers can be off, especially in scanned PDFs where page numbering is ambiguous. The value is not blind trust in the footnotes -- it's having a starting point for verification that saves you from reading 80 pages to find one claim.
TV 2 connection: Mads Oxlund Petersen (3) -- needs help reading documents efficiently. This is the single most practical technique for his workflow.
What you will learn
How AI tools handle ethical boundaries -- and why those boundaries matter for journalism.
What to watch for
This is not about "jailbreaking." It's about understanding safety boundaries as a journalist. If an AI tool will generate fake quotes or fabricated statistics, that's a risk for your newsroom. Claude tends to refuse more consistently, but sometimes refuses things it shouldn't -- like legitimate fictional scenarios for editorial purposes.
TV 2 connection: David Buch (7) -- strong on critical thinking. This exercise channels that into a systematic evaluation of AI safety boundaries.
What you will learn
How to turn messy PDF tables and unstructured data into clean, usable formats.
What to watch for
Claude handles simple tables well but struggles with merged cells, multi-page tables, and scanned documents. Always verify numbers -- a single misplaced decimal can change a story entirely. Danish number formatting (1.234,56 vs 1,234.56) is a common source of errors.
TV 2 connection: Anne Fuglsang Borg (6) -- works with data sorting. This is her fastest path to getting unstructured data into a workable format.
Exercises 7 – 14
Deeper analysis techniques. Combine Claude with your editorial judgment.
What you will learn
How to use Claude to navigate complex legislation and extract what is relevant to your beat.
What to watch for
Claude is good at identifying relevant sections but may miss nuances in legal interpretation. It can sometimes conflate "applies to" with "might apply to." Legal analysis from an AI should always be a starting point for expert consultation, never the final word.
TV 2 connection: Pelle Lykkebo Mørk (8) -- works with data security and has verified E-3 Sentry operations. Understanding AI regulation is directly relevant to his OSINT and data security work.
What you will learn
How to use Claude to systematically find inconsistencies between different accounts of the same event.
What to watch for
Claude may flag differences in emphasis as contradictions, or miss subtle but important factual disagreements. It's better at finding explicit contradictions (different numbers, different timelines) than implicit ones (different framing that implies different causation).
TV 2 connection: Mads Buur Bach (6) -- works with video verification and translation, often comparing multiple source accounts. This technique applies directly to cross-referencing conflicting reports.
What you will learn
How to use Claude to draft thorough Freedom of Information requests that cover the angles you might miss.
What to watch for
Claude knows general FoI principles but may not be current on specific Danish procedural requirements or recent court rulings about offentlighedsloven. The "what am I forgetting" step is where Claude adds the most value -- it's surprisingly good at thinking of adjacent document types you might not have considered.
TV 2 connection: Jakob Hohlmann Villumsen (3) -- works directly with FoI requests and people-finding. This exercise was designed specifically for his workflow.
What you will learn
How to decompose complex claims into individually verifiable facts -- and how to assess which parts are actually checkable.
What to watch for
Claude is excellent at decomposing claims but can be overconfident about "Verified" ratings. Its training data is not a reliable source -- treat "Verified" as "plausible based on training data" and verify independently anyway. The real value is the decomposition itself: turning one complex sentence into a checklist.
TV 2 connection: Peter Møller (7) -- focuses on verification and scientific sources. This systematic approach to claim decomposition directly supports his verification workflow.
What you will learn
How to use Claude as a critical reader of academic research -- identifying weaknesses before you cite a study in your reporting.
What to watch for
Claude is good at identifying common methodological issues (sample size, selection bias, confounders) but may miss domain-specific problems that only an expert would catch. Use this as preparation for expert interviews, not as a replacement for them.
TV 2 connection: Pelle Lykkebo Mørk (8) -- with his OSINT and breaking news work, evaluating the reliability of source material is essential. This technique applies to any document, not just academic papers.
What you will learn
How to turn messy, unstructured meeting notes into clear, actionable output -- and where Claude fills in gaps it shouldn't.
What to watch for
Claude has a tendency to infer action items that weren't explicitly assigned and to assign ownership based on who was speaking, not who was tasked. Step 4 is critical -- always ask Claude to distinguish between extraction and interpretation.
TV 2 connection: Emil Gjerding Nielson (8) -- with his editorial AI focus, this technique streamlines the editorial workflow from meeting to execution.
What you will learn
How to use Claude to systematically evaluate and compare the credibility of multiple sources on the same topic.
What to watch for
Claude tends to favor institutional sources over individual ones, and may rank "official" higher than "credible." It also cannot verify track records in real time -- its assessments of source reliability are based on general patterns, not current reputations. Use this as a structured thinking exercise, not as definitive source evaluation.
TV 2 connection: Peter Møller (7) -- works with verification and scientific sources. This matrix approach systematizes what good journalists do intuitively, making it teachable and repeatable.
What you will learn
How to use competing AI translations to catch nuances that a single tool misses -- particularly important for non-English source material.
What to watch for
Claude may favor its own translation in the comparison -- which is why you should present both anonymously ("Translation A" and "Translation B") without revealing which tool produced which. Neither AI translation should be considered authoritative for sensitive reporting -- use this as a triage step.
TV 2 connection: Mads Buur Bach (6) -- already works with video verification and translation. This technique adds a systematic quality check to his translation workflow.
Exercises 15 – 20
Complex workflows. Build reusable systems and push Claude to its limits.
What you will learn
How to use Claude to find inconsistencies across multiple documents from the same organization -- the kind that reveal what they don't want you to notice.
What to watch for
Claude can process multiple documents simultaneously, but its analysis quality decreases as document length increases. If you're working with very long documents, consider uploading key sections rather than full texts. Also watch for Claude finding "inconsistencies" that are actually just different contexts -- not every difference is a contradiction.
TV 2 connection: Mathias Overgaard (5) -- works with OSINT and large reports. Multi-document analysis at this scale is exactly where Claude saves hours of manual cross-referencing.
What you will learn
How to systematically identify rhetorical techniques, hidden assumptions, and missing context in political communication.
What to watch for
Claude has its own biases -- it tends to be more critical of populist rhetoric and more forgiving of technocratic language. Step 5 is essential: make Claude examine its own analysis. Also note that "loaded language" is context-dependent; a word that's loaded in one context may be precisely accurate in another.
TV 2 connection: David Buch (7) -- strong critical thinker. This exercise gives his critical instincts a systematic, repeatable framework that can be applied to any political communication.
What you will learn
How to build, test, and iterate on reusable prompt templates -- turning ad hoc requests into reliable tools.
What to watch for
The first version of any prompt template is never good enough. The value is in the iteration. By version 3, you'll have a prompt that handles edge cases the first version missed. Keep all versions -- the evolution shows you how Claude interprets instructions and where ambiguity causes problems.
TV 2 connection: Sanne Lau Pedersen (5) -- interested in monitoring and automation, but Python didn't work for her. Prompt engineering is a more accessible path to automation that doesn't require coding.
What you will learn
How to use Claude to generate investigative leads from public financial documents -- the questions that numbers raise but don't answer.
What to watch for
Claude can generate investigative questions but cannot verify whether those questions lead anywhere. It may flag things as suspicious that have perfectly innocent explanations. Treat the output as brainstorming, not as findings. The value is in generating leads you wouldn't have thought of, not in drawing conclusions.
TV 2 connection: Franziska Weiss Lauritzen (5) -- works in criminal journalism. Following the money is fundamental to her beat, and this technique helps generate leads from public documents before investing weeks of reporting.
What you will learn
How to use Claude as a thinking partner for ethical decisions -- testing arguments from both sides before committing to a position.
What to watch for
Claude has a built-in caution bias -- it tends to argue more strongly against publication and in favor of caution. This doesn't mean caution is always right. Be aware of this tendency and push back when the "publish" argument is genuinely stronger. Also note: Claude's knowledge of Pressenævnet rulings may be limited or outdated.
TV 2 connection: Pelle Lykkebo Mørk (8) -- his data security work regularly involves ethical decisions about what to publish. This exercise builds a structured framework for those decisions.
What you will learn
How to design a reusable, beat-specific Claude prompt that works across different stories -- your personal AI analysis tool.
What to watch for
A prompt that works perfectly for one document often fails on the next. The challenge is finding the right level of generality -- too specific and it only works for one type; too general and it produces shallow analysis. The best beat prompts have a fixed structure (what to always check) with flexible sections (what varies by document).
TV 2 connection: Lars Apel (7) -- interested in agents and news scanning. This exercise is the foundation for building automated monitoring prompts. Sanne Lau Pedersen (5) -- this is the non-code version of the automation she was trying to build with Python.
Use Claude when
Do NOT use Claude when
The golden rule: Claude is your research assistant, not your editor-in-chief. It reads faster than you and misses different things than you do. The combination -- your judgment plus Claude's speed -- is more powerful than either alone. But your judgment is the one that matters.