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Sodiq Ojuroungbe
In its effort to propagate new innovation within the media landscape, the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism has embarked on training journalists across the country on fact-checking, data journalism and investigative reporting.
PTCIJ in partnership with European Union are currently training no fewer than 100 journalists across the five regions in the country.
The training was funded by the European Union through the British Council.
The training which was held in Lagos last week was a six-day training where 20 journalists in the state were trained on topics relating to fact-checking, data journalism and investigative reporting.
Speaking with PLATFORM TIMES, the programme manager of PTCIJ, Mboho Eno said it become imperative to train journalists across the country on the new trend in the profession.
Mboho emphasised that the training is to enable journalist to effectively fact-check and carry out investigation that would have a positive impact on the society.
He said, “It is a capacity building session, we know that in any industry when people don’t get train and retrain, people tend to lose touch with the current realities.
“PTCIJ is a media innovation centre and one of our mandates is to ensure that innovation within the media landscape is propagated across the media house.
“We got journalists from different media houses to come together for a week for an intensive session which includes fact-checking, data journalism and investigative reporting specifically on the criminal justice and anti-corruption unit.
“It is a project funded by the European Union in collaboration with the British Council and it meant to run across five regions of the country.
“This is the fourth states we are holding the training and the last two remaining regions will be held next week.
“It is a training session to enable journalist to effectively fact-check and carry out investigation.
“Across the nation, we would be training a hundred journalists and 20 journalists per region.
“Our major selection criteria basically of that you have to be a journalist reporting the criminal justice and anti-corruption beat and you should have done a couple of work on that beat for sometimes before you qualify. That is not to say that journalist on another beat are not trained”.
Also, the provost of Nigeria Institute of Journalism, Mr Gbemiga Ogunleye maintained that fact-checking could assist in reducing fake news across the country.
Ogunleye charged the journalists to ensure they cross-check information before reporting.
“If you are in a hurry to break the news, you may misinform the public, take your time to avoid misinformation”, he added.
