Ragan Communications: Allison Carter says CEOs are putting human judgment back at the center of communications

Ragan Communications: Allison Carter says CEOs are putting human judgment back at the center of communications

Allison Carter of Ragan Communications argues that CEOs are moving from choosing between people and AI toward combining them, while giving human skills greater weight. In the HarrisX & Ragan Survey of CEOs and Communications Leaders, 52% preferred a human communicator to write a speech, up 9 points year over year. Carter also notes that 70% see communicators equipped with AI tools as vital to company success, while 30% prioritize AI prompting and data fluency. She reads the results as a shift away from treating AI as a cure-all and toward using it alongside human judgment. Carter says the greater danger is not communicators falling behind in AI skills, but communications departments relying on AI so heavily that they surrender judgment and humanity. She warns that polished but generic output can become “pretty, polished background noise,” and argues that higher-level strategic thinking and empathy are increasingly being put in human hands. The speechwriting question required respondents to choose between only AI and only a person; Carter says the more nuanced answers suggest a combination of human and AI capabilities. Escape Meridian interpretation: Carter’s suggestion that greater familiarity with AI’s capabilities and limitations may explain the shift is an inference, not a reason tested by the survey.

Publication: 7336c5df-4a86-47ff-8717-36a79e83073b

attribution — uncertain: Author and publisher are correct. However, claim 3 says Carter argues that teams risk over-reliance on AI, while the source presents this as a survey finding shared by communicators and CEOs. Separately, the summary labels Carter's own inference as 'Escape Meridian interpretation,' which blurs whose view it is. Smallest repairs: say 'Carter reports that communicators and CEOs agree...' and attribute the familiarity explanation to Carter rather than to an EM label.

communicators and CEOs are in agreement that the greatest danger right now is not that the comms field will fall behind in their AI skills.

summary — pass: The summary is accurate and readable for non-specialists. It covers the speechwriting shift, the 70/30 split, the over-reliance concern, the binary-question caveat, and the untested inference. Its force is somewhat flattened: the reading omits Carter's emphatic claims that AI can never create something new or care, and her point that use is shifting toward research, brainstorming and copy editing. Adding one of these would better preserve her voice. The question follows directly from the source's own gap.

AI can never create something truly new. AI can never care about another person.

date — pass: The originalPublished value, 2026-11-13, matches the article byline date and the feed entry.

Nov. 13, 2026

support — pass: The figures are source-stated, and the 9-point shift is consistent with last year's 57% preferring AI. The inference about growing familiarity with AI is correctly framed as untested, because Carter notes the survey did not probe reasons. No unsupported benefits or costs are added.

This year, 52% said they’d rather have the human communicator, a shift of 9 points year over year.

media — pass: The selected media is the verified direct link to the original Ragan article, which is the most relevant way to access the source.