9th grade AI enabled classroom, Mitaka School, Tokyo

Jefferson Fellows go back to school in Tokyo
(Tokyo, Japan)-As an old (in both senses of the word) high school teacher, I always love getting back into the classroom. The classroom we visited here in Japan this week, however, looks a lot different than the one I taught in many decades ago.

We visited Mitaka Secondary School as part of the Jefferson Fellowship program that I lead for the East-West Center. Each year, the fellowship brings together 12 regional journalists on a study and reporting tour. This year, we’re exploring AI and its impacts in Hawaii (last week), Japan, and South Korea (beginning Saturday). 

Fellow Inwook Song interviews a Mitaka student

At Mitaka, they’ve integrated AI throughout their curriculum and into classroom lessons and activities like the one we witnessed. In this 9^th grade class, the teacher introduced the lesson on WWII, inviting groups of students to discuss how it may have been prevented. Then, the students were asked to select prompts on an AI chatbot to vet their questions and solutions. The students also can create their own set of prompts (they call them menus) to challenge the chatbot, which is not a LLM but instead a closed system built just for the Metropolitan School District, where 116,000 students are using AI.

During a Q&A session after our classroom visit, we learned that the school doesn’t have any data yet about the efficacy of AI-assisted instruction. It will be interesting to compare the results from AI and non-AI classrooms.

Here in Tokyo, the fellows have also visited or had panelists from NHK (the national broadcaster); Sophia University; Asia University; TEPIA Advanced Technology Gallery; Tsukuba Super Science City; the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience; parliamentarians from the Mirai party; Code for Japan; and the government’s Digital Agency. All explored various aspects of AI’s impact on society.

We’re headed soon to Seoul. Stay tuned for details.

Fellows Gelo Gonzales (l) and Purple Romero inquire about 
the AI lesson projected by the 9th grade teacher.

Jefferson Fellow Louise Matsakis practices her
surgical techniques at Queen's Medical Center
in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Journalists gather in Hawaii to learn about AI, peace journalism
12 journalists from the Asia-Pacific region, including the US, gathered in Honolulu this week for the first leg of the 2026 Jefferson Fellowships. This year, the fellows are exploring AI and its impacts.

We’ve heard from experts in a number of domains, from cancer surgeons to State emergency planners to legislators at the state capitol to marine biologists. The cross-cutting theme is that they see AI only as a tool, and that the human element is indispensable. No one said that they plan to replace staff with AI. 

Jeff fellows sail off to Coconut Island to hear about
how the Hawaii Institute of Marine biology
uses AI.

My portion of the program was framing reporting AI in terms of peace journalism. After a PJ 101 lecture (definitions, principles, and examples), I offered the journalists advice on how PJ can transform reporting from panic-driven, jargon-laden, sensational tech journalism into a more socially responsible public discourse.

I shared these tips on bringing PJ’s principles to AI and tech reporting:

1. Reject us vs. them, good guy vs. bad guy, AI as savior vs. AI as destroyer, tech evangelists vs. doomsdayers narratives. Look for the gray area, the nuance, in between the extremes.
2. Report with human rights center-stage, especially privacy, worker’s rights, and the right to live in a clean, safe environment. Prioritizing privacy and digital rights ensures that voices from vulnerable communities are heard—communities that are disproportionately targeted by facial recognition, predatory policing, security cameras, and data exploitation. Prioritize also the environmental impact of data centers, particularly on the marginalized communities where they are often located.
3. Reject corporate or government PR. Fact check, verify claims, and be skeptical of claims that “AI did it” ((e.g. Hugging Face) rather than a company accepting responsibility for AI missteps.
4. Report about algorithmic biases against groups, nations, and regional languages. AI models are often founded on outdated, biased, exclusionary, sexist or racist data that can lead to responses that discriminate against poor or minority communities.
5. Carefully choose words.  Avoid anthropomorphizing AI with misleading terms like "thinking," "feeling," or "sentient." These brush off human accountability and choice. Avoid alarmist language, too—"unstoppable,” “out of control,” “apocalypse,” “doomsday,” “disaster,” “terminator,” etc.

6.      Offer counternarratives that debunk media created myths and misperceptions. Challenge the myth that AI is inherently objective, neutral, or free from human error. Challenge the myth that AI goes rogue on its own.

7.      Report to give a voice to the marginalized—indigenous, poor communities, speakers of regional languages, and rural/isolated/disconnected communities. Avoid elite only sourcing and framing (Big Tech companies and their leadership, venture capitalists, and government cheerleaders). Report on data sovereignty.

I love this group, which is energetic, curious, and fun to work with.

We’re headed to Tokyo tomorrow to continue our study and reporting tour. Stay tuned for details.

State Rep. Julie Reyes Odo gives 
the fellows a tour of the HI state capitol.

 

Call for Articles: The Peace Journalist magazine
The Peace Journalist, a semi-annual magazine produced by the Center for Global Peace Journalism/Steven Youngblood, is seeking submissions for its December edition. Submissions should be 800-1600 words, and address peace journalism/peace media projects and research. Please also submit photos, if possible. We do not run articles about general peace projects or processes unless they have a strong, central media component/angle.

The previous edition of The Peace Journalist (June 2026) can be found at https://online.fliphtml5.com/cvabr/Peace-Journalist-June-2026-final/#p=1  . 

The deadline for submissions is November 1. The magazine usually fills up quickly, so the sooner you can get your pieces in, the better. Please submit to steven.youngblood@fulbrightmail.org .

Thank you in advance for your submissions.

Best wishes,
Steven L. Youngblood
Editor, The Peace Journalist

 

PINA Media Summit in Savusavu, Fiji

Journalists address remoteness of Pacific region audiences
(Savusavu, Fiji)—The second full day of the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) Media Summit largely revolved around the theme of reaching spread out, rural audiences—a problem shared by news media around the world.

In the Pacific, distance and remoteness are especially noteworthy. Examples from the region include the Solomon Islands (249,000 square miles of territory--land and sea); Fiji (1 million square miles); Micronesia (1.15 million square miles); Cook Islands (757,000 square miles), and Palau (233,000 square miles). By comparison, the largest US state, Alaska, has 665,000 square miles.

“Remoteness is a real issue,” noted Kalifi Moana, PINA president. He said it’s PINA goal to reach all of the areas of the Pacific with media training and partnerships, even remote areas like New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and the Federated States of Micronesia. He said that the diversity of the peoples of the Pacific is a strength, not a burden. “Togetherness is our advantage,” he observed.

Other speakers like Rose Amos from the National Broadcasting Company in Papua New Guinea also stressed that “it’s our responsibility to give a voice to the voiceless in rural areas,” one of the key principles of peace journalism, it must be noted. Yet the challenge of reaching these audiences with news and information is formidable, given the distances as well as challenges like unreliable electricity and internet connectivity.

Pecili Naviticoko, the president of Vualiku Radio in remote northern Fiji, echoed these challenges to engaging rural audiences, noting that access to many of the places his media outlet serves is by boat only, and is thus weather-dependent. “There’s no shortage of stories” in these areas, he said. “The challenge is receiving them.” He shared slides showing his reporters “going the extra mile” by boat and on foot, wading through flooded areas, to help those in remote communities tell their stories.

Naviticoko and several other speakers noted the ongoing relevance of radio as often the only tool that can reach remote areas, especially during storms and earthquakes (like the one in Vanuatu several years ago).

Other sessions on day two focused on financing media, advising attendees to diversity revenue sources. It was commented that although paywalls have succeeded in larger markets like Fiji, for a variety of reasons, they wouldn’t work in smaller countries.

The day finished off with panels on women in media, development partners, and public service media. Especially poignant was the presentation of Esther Pavihi of the Broadcasting Corportation of Niue (population 1,600). She detailed her life in a one-person newsroom and overcoming ongoing struggles like rebuilding after a fire. Her dedication to journalism is admirable, and infectious.

Overall, the Media Forum was successful not just in the information shared, but in the networking done by the 150 or so attendees. I had the chance during a plenary session to share details about my East-West Center programs for Pacific journalists. I hope my networking pays off with even greater participation from these reporters.

A panel of Pac Islands journalists addresses their
common challenges during PINA.

 

PINA Media Summit, Savusavu, Fiji

Pacific journalists tackle free speech, AI issues at conference
(Savusavu, Fiji)-Despite challenges like ongoing government censorship and AI adoption, I came away from day one of the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) Media Summit yesterday at least mildly optimistic about the future of journalism in this region.

Since AI is at the top of everyone’s agenda, the conference understandably kicked off with a great session from an organization called Other Labs which presented data from a study they did (in conjunction with PINA) on AI in Pacific newsrooms. They found that the sector “is experimenting with AI,” and is open to both its challenges and opportunities. It also found that AI is used in Pacific newsrooms for handful of tasks like research and transcription; that AI is being adopted before policies and guidelines are in place; that there are limited AI resources for Pacific languages; that resource shortages are limiting AI adoption; and finally that in more than half of the 49 newsrooms in 11 countries surveyed, there is no AI training.

These findings roughly mirror a smaller, unscientific survey I did on the subject that I presented last Monday at workshops in Suva. (See previous blog).

This was followed by a presentation about Other Lab's 18-month project (The News AI Lab) which will bring to selected Pacific newsrooms AI enterprise tool access, technical and safety support, in-person trainings and events, and support for structured newsrooms. 

Fred Wesley's inspiration speech on
overcoming government censorship

Not all challenges and opportunities are new ones. Government censorship is a problem as old as the printing press. Here in Fiji, the press and the country went through some especially difficult times between 2006 and 2022 in this regard. According to conference presenter Fred Wesley, vice president of the Fijian Media Association (co-sponsor of the event), the Media Industrial Development Act of 2006 tightly controlled media so that no government criticism was possible. The government even stationed censors in newsrooms! Wesley said that no journalist was jailed during this free speech reign of terror because journalists censored themselves. “It taught us to jail ourselves,” he said. Once the law was repealed, the sun rose again on media freedom in Fiji, which was rated 180^th in press freedom (Reporters Without Borders) while the law was in effect, and 21^st in press freedom afterwards.

In his speech at the conference, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka also addressed the significance of the law’s repeal, noting that it was “the defining moment of the restoration of press freedom” in Fiji. His speech was a call for responsible, non-sensational, non-inflammatory media in Fiji, and for a partnership with the media for combating mis and disinformation.

Coming from a country where media are increasingly being targeted by an angry, petulant administration, the resilience and courage shown by Fijian journalists is indeed inspiring.

After his speech, a ceremony was held at the Media Summit to launch a new entity, the Pacific Center for Communications and Journalism, to be housed at Fiji National University in cooperation with the Fijian Media Association. It will be devoted to training, research, responsible AI implementation, and developing leaders in the media sphere.

Stay tuned next week for my report on Day Two of the PINA Media Summit.