A cross-section of journalists has undergone a 2-day training on fact-checking in Accra.
Participants, mostly journalists are drawn from the Central, Western, Western North, Eastern, and Volta Regions to participate in the training.
The training aimed to equip journalists with the requisite knowledge and skills on how to fact-check information in line with their duty, particularly misinformation and disinformation penetrating the Ghanaian information ecosystem.
The event is organised by Dubawa Ghana, a fact-checking arm of the Center for Journalism, Innovation and Development (CJID), with funding from the US Embassy in Ghana.
Addressing journalists, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Ghana, Nicole Chulicks remarked that journalism plays an important role in public policy and that the journalist must educate, raise issues of concern and propose potential solutions.
She further adds that readers and listeners need solid, fact-based journalism.
The fact-checking organization has observed an increasing and worrying trend of misinformation, disinformation, and misinformation on Ghanaian social media.
Understanding information disorder, actors and techniques of mis/information; verification and fact-checking, media ethics and law, and the right to information law were some of the topics participants received the relevant knowledge and skills in.
A Lecturer in Media Ethics at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, Lawyer Zakaria Tanko encouraged journalists to utilize knowledge and skills imparted to them in fact-checking to minimize the spread of fake news into the public sphere.
Speaking at the closing of the two-day training workshop on fact-checking for media practitioners, Mr. Zakaria Tanko highlighted the importance of fact-checking information to avoid spreading false news.
He underscored the need for journalists to work in line with the ethics of the profession.
According to him, a journalist is free from criticism when information has undergone fact-checking.
Some participants shared with Beach Newsroom, how they tend to use the skills and knowledge received to effect change in their practice of journalism.
“This training has enlightened me to have a second eye for what is to be published. Fact -checking training has been great to me, as a journalist. I need to verify information before dissemination,”
” I have been impacted with several basic things, which I used to do but did not know its consequences but being here has been an eye-opener for me. “
“As people dealing with information , we can always mislead people and so we must be able to verify appropriately and to check all the fact we receive from people. So as a participant of this training on fact -checking, it is very useful.”
