By Pita Ligaiula in Savusavu
Pacific newsrooms must use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to strengthen journalism without sacrificing human judgement, editorial standards and cultural expertise, speakers at the 8th Pacific Media Summit in Fiji said.
Australian Associated Press (AAP) Editor-in-Chief Andrew Drummond said AI was changing journalism rapidly, but the core responsibility of journalists remained the same providing accurate information audiences could trust.
“AI won’t cost your job, but a journalist using AI will,” Drummond said, citing a growing debate within the media industry.
He said journalists should familiarise themselves with AI and consider how it could be used in their newsrooms, while maintaining strong editorial controls.
Drummond said AAP’s AI policy required a “human-in-the-loop” approach, meaning any process involving AI must start and finish with human involvement.
“Be transparent. If you apply AI to your workflow, tell your audience.
“But most importantly, despite the technology at play, maintain your journalistic rigour. Don’t simply accept what’s put in front of you,” he said at the plenary in Savusavu.
Drummond said verification remained central to journalism, particularly as misinformation and disinformation continued to undermine public trust.
“We need journalists for facts. We need facts for trust. And we need trust for a shared reality,” he said, quoting United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming.
Drummond said journalists did not need to be specialist fact-checkers to play a role in countering misinformation.
“As journalists, what we are doing to verify the information we are sharing with the world is really, really important,” he said.
He also highlighted emerging uses of AI in newsrooms, including facial recognition and automated publication of sports photographs, but said Pacific media organisations were at different stages of experimentation.
“It’s important to know that despite all the talk, while lots of newsrooms are advanced, there are also lots of newsrooms that are still very much in an experimental stage with AI technology,” he said.
Pacific Media Network (PMN) CEO, Don Mann said AI could deliver major gains for Pacific-language journalism if people, language and cultural judgement remained at the centre.
PMN established an AI policy in 2024 and developed a Gemini-based news translation system capable of translating news bulletins into several Pacific languages.
Mann said the system was designed to produce broadcast-ready language rather than literal word-for-word translations.
The tool incorporates PMN’s editorial style guide, broadcast guidelines, language dictionaries and reference material to provide context-specific translations.
He said a 24-page pack-news document containing 19 stories could be processed into a broadcast-ready Cook Islands Māori news bulletin in about 90 seconds.
Mann said the system achieved about 80 to 90 percent accuracy depending on the language, but journalists still had to correct, fact-check and prepare the material for broadcast.
“We don’t say that it’s 100 percent accurate.
“AI helps us with the first heavy pass, and it doesn’t replace expertise,” he said.
Mann said first-language speakers remained responsible for the final decision.
“We’re not replacing journalists. We’re not replacing producers or language experts, but we’re using the tool to support them,” he said.
The approach, he said, gave journalists more time to develop stories and programmes while keeping language experts at the centre of editorial judgement and community understanding.
He said audiences needed to know when media organisations were using AI and how it was being used.
ABC International Development Digital Transformation Advisor Grant Sherlock said the shift towards digital news consumption was no longer a future prediction.
“The audience shift has happened, and the opportunities are waiting to be taken,” Sherlock said.
Sherlock said Pacific media organisations needed to continue building digital skills and ensuring digital transformation was treated as a whole-of-organisation responsibility.
He said more than 300 journalists had taken part in ABC International Development digital skills training across the Pacific in recent years, with more than 200 trained face-to-face in their countries.
Sherlock said digital teams could not be expected to carry the responsibility alone.
“The digital lift must be a whole of organisation effort,” he said.
He also highlighted the need for Pacific media organisations to develop new revenue models as audiences increasingly move online.
“This requires skills and understanding in accessing and interpreting analytics, in transforming sales teams for digital revenue models, and in deploying new systems to support these models,” he said.
Sherlock said PACMAS would continue working with the country Press Association in Australia to create placement and twinning opportunities for Pacific journalists, including sharing approaches to revenue models.
The plenary session on Digital Transformation, AI and New Technology: Opportunities for Pacific Media formed part of the Pacific Media Summit in Fiji, bringing together regional media practitioners to examine technology, newsroom capacity and sustainable journalism.
The speakers agreed that while technology was changing how news was produced and distributed, editorial judgement, verification, transparency and local expertise remained central to trusted journalism.
