Fidelis David in Akure
Dubawa, the West Africa’s independent verification and fact-checking project, has trained journalists in Ondo State on fact-checking techniques and various Google tools for information coverage and verification, to enhance their reporting skills. The two-day training organised in partnership with Google News Initiative, comes at a crucial time, with the upcoming governorship election in the coastal state.
Speaking at the event, the Director of Programme, Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development, Dr. Babatunde Akintunde, said Dubawa, established to help amplify the culture of truth in public discourse, public policy, and journalistic practice, thought it was necessary to enhance the capacity of journalists in non-urban communities, particularly in Ondo and Edo States where election will hold in a couple of months.
Akintunde, represented by the Deputy Director, Accountability Programme, Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development, Mr. Eno Mboho, said the group noticed a huge volume of dis-information misinformation during the last generation election and suspected that such case might repeat itself in the coming election in Ondo State. hence the need to fight it through training.
According to him, “It’s just the need for us to grow the army of fact-checkers. And we thought it will be nice to have this training as we prepare for the Ondo State governorship election. During the general election, we noticed a huge volume of dis-information and we also suspect that that’s going be the same as we look up towards the election in Ondo State.
“One other thing that birthed this initiative is also the need to grow foot soldiers of fact-checkers within our space. Normally we do this training in the cities-the big cities like Lagos, Abuja and others -and we thought it was also wise to extend this training to community journalists who are closer to the populace than some of the mega national media platforms.
“And we also realised that one thing we needed to do is to target engagements because every time we say fact-checking training we notice that the concentration has likely been on big platforms, and community platforms are most times left out. So that’s why we also said let’s bring this home to community platforms and also encourage them through capacity building.”
He added: “We all can do a lot in combating the menace of mis-information, especially as we look up to elections, we want to have a free fair and transparent electoral process, and that starts with journalists being able to send out information to the public that will help them in proper choice making as against information that just goes out without proper scrutiny which are the end of the day can confuse citizens and then we begin to have leadership that is not totally the will of the people.
“This training catered for about 40 participants drawn largely across platforms that operate in Ondo State. Though we had maybe about five or six participants that came from neighboring Ekiti and Osun States, the concentration of participants was largely from Ondo State.”
Akintunde encouraged Nigerians to always try as much as possible to ensure that whatever information they’re passing, whether through WhatsApp platforms or through one-on-one messaging, is accurate.
“Help contribute to the security of Nigeria by not spreading disinformation and misinformation,” he added.
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