The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) has created the Pacific Islander Task Force in an effort to:
- Increase engagement, understanding, and awareness of Pacific Islander membership within AAJA. This is to ensure the organization fulfills its mission to serve all AAPI journalists by recognizing and uplifting Pacific Islanders. The Task Force aims to represent the indigenous peoples of Oceania, comprised of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia
- . Develop tools to help journalists covering Pacific Islanders/Pacific island communities to ensure fair and accurate coverage.
As we approach our work, we will seek to answer the following questions:
How can we as an organization be more inclusive of Pacific Islander members?
How can AAJA better ensure fair and accurate coverage of Pacific Islander issues? What are the weaknesses, strengths and areas of opportunities in current coverage?
How can AAJA help journalists who are covering Pacific Islander communities, to provide resources, context and expertise?
If you are a member, journalist, viewer or community leader who would like to assist us in this process, please reach out to pitaskforce.aaja@gmail.com. This project involves members and non-members and seeks other partner organizations who are working on similar projects to build a cohesive support system.
If you are a Pacific Islander and you’d like to be considered as a source/resource, we ask you to submit your information so we can contact you at a later date for opportunities and keep you posted about PITF activities and initiatives. Our goal is to ensure that today’s working journalists have access to a diverse group of sources.
Anita Hofschneider
Lauren Kawana
Thomas Mangloña
Rachel Ramirez
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