Tiana
Haxton RNZ Pacific journalist/presenter
The
new president of the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA)
wants to strengthen the region’s newsrooms.
Neville
Choi, who is also president of Papua New Guinea’s Media
Council, told RNZ Pacific that the PINA Secretariat needed
greater support, accountability and transparency.
Choi
said strengthening the PINA Secretariat was his initial
focus as president.
He also wants to see national
media associations empowered.
“Because the national
media associations should be the contact point for all the
media in each of the countries,” he said.
“Those are
the two main things: strengthening; in any way we can to
strengthen and provide more accountability and transparency
to the PINA Secretariat, and give them more help and
assistance, and see what they need.”
He said the
Pacific’s media organisations were facing rapid changes
brought about by advancements in technology, particularly
artificial intelligence (AI).
The use of AI was a
widely discussed topic at the PINA Media Summit in Fiji last
week.
“Understanding how AI works, and effectively
using those and incorporating those into our newsroom
workflows, AI is just the start of it.
“We feel in PNG
that AI is still a tool, and that we need also need to
strengthen the human oversight over all of our newsroom
processes, which is the core of what we do.”
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Choi
believes larger media organisations have a role to play in
supporting smaller media outlets facing challenges.
He
said while “media in the Pacific is now stronger than it
[once] was, it can get stronger”.
“We can be more
united. We have a lot of small island state media who are
still doing it tough,” he said.
“They have a lot of
challenges, and the bigger media organisations within the
region can help them by empowering them, providing mentoring
and training – that’s one of the main focuses also for
PINA.”
Meanwhile, PNG’s Media Council and National
Broadcasting Corporation have jointly agreed to host the
next Pacific Media Summit in Port
Moresby.
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