The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has trained some selected journalists in Tamale on fact-checking and countering mis-disinformation at Modern City Hotel.
Adizatu Moro Maiga, program coordinator speaking to the Journalists at the capacity building mentioned that, MFWA rolled out a capacity building workshop’s across Ghana and the capacity building is essential to build the capacity of Journalist to be able to aquire the knowledge and skills to do Fact-Checking.
Madam Adizatu added that, we are in an election year and during elections alot of things do happen in terms of mis- disinformationand and people use social media platforms to spill out false information causing harm and even generate into violence.
The program coordinator at the MFWA said with funding from Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) they have rolled out this capacity building workshop’s in seven out of the sixteen regions of Ghana especially to build the capacity’s of Journalists to equip them with some skills to be able to counter mis-disinformation during this election period.
“Across the seven regions we are training a total of hendred selected Journalist twenty five per session she said”.
The second component of the training provided a deep dive into some fact-checking and verification tools that can be used to identify and counter misinformation, as well as fact-checking standards and ethics.
A facilitator, and lecturer with the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), Stephen Tindi, mentioned, among other things, financial incentives, political advancement, and falsehood to push forward a particular interest as reasons why people create or share wrong information, either knowingly or unknowingly.
For the public not to fall prey to mis-disinformation, Mr. Tindi said it was important for the public to be circumspect and scrutinise the information they receive before they consider sharing “and if you are unsure, just stop it, you don’t lose anything if you don’t share”
Source: yagbonradioonline
