iwatch Africa, a nongovernmental organization in Ghana has organized a done day training on misinformation, disinformation, mal-information and online abuse ahead of the 2024 general elections.
The ultimate goal of the workshop organized for journalists on Friday, August 30, 2024, was to equip the practitioners with the necessary skills needed to differentiate between spot misinformation, disinformation and mal-information.
Philip K. Banini, the project lead for iWatch Africa said the aim is to empower newsrooms to sensitize their journalists on misinformation and disinformation as that will determines the journalist’s ability to spot fake news.
“We are organizing this project to empower newsrooms to sensitize their journalists or workers in terms of misinformation and disinformation in the media space. We have monitored the media space to see that people are fed with a lot of information that has not been fact checked and its misleads people to make decisions that doesn’t help the country hence the need to train journalists on how to spot fake news,” Philip K. Banini stated.
On online abuse suffered by journalist’s especially females, the Executive Director of Targeted Rights Initiative, Doreen Raheena Sulleyman, has urged practitioners to make sure that they report cases of abuse to their supervisors.
She stated that “A problem shared is a problem half solved,” so journalists who are abused because of their work need to take action and report the cases for their bosses to know what they deal with on a daily basis.
“You should report to your newsroom manager, your editor, or even the general manager. Every institution has its own designated channels for reporting issues, so it’s important to follow the correct procedure,” she advised.
