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The Media Mentor Leadership Academy (MMLA) has organised training for Nigerian campus journalists and media practitioners as part of way to combat information disorder and fake news in our media space.
The media academy noted that the training is part of its end of the year programme.
Miss Joke Kujenya, executive-in-charge, MMLA, said the training is to arm and educate young journalists on the dangers of disseminating falsehood.
Ms Kujenya added that bombarding the media with falsehood is hazardous and therefore must be checked.
It is ”salient to combat distortion of facts and truths that has become the bane, not only of our society; but also a global menace,” she said.
The virtual training, titled: “Information Disorder/ introduction to Fact-Checking”, which was held via Zoom featured participation of journalists across the country.
The facilitator of the training, Mr. Kemi Busari, Editor of Dubawa, lectured on information disorder and why it is necessary to curb it.
Busari defined information disorder as
“the many ways our information environment is polluted, which is what is often referred to as ‘fake news’’.
He stressed that the complexity of this disorder goes beyond news only being fake.
The facilitator traced origin of the discourse to the Council of Europe in 2017 and deduced that the council agreed that fake news is not the term to express the concept.
According to him, the council said it was “woefully inadequate” and “it has been appropriated by politicians to slam any news or organisation they find disagreeable, thus becoming a mechanism for repression”.
He further gave the types of information disorder as disinformation, misinformation and malformation.
He explained that “disinformation represent information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person which happens when the person sharing the information intentionally put out falsehood.
On misinformation, he said: “is the type of information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm”.
“The third and the last he said, is Malformation the one that happens when the information is actually based on reality, but used with the intent to inflict harm on a person, organization or country”, he educated.
The Dubawa Editor noted that fact-checking is essential in the media looking at the multimedia system that media organisations operate.
He emphasised that journalists “must be cautious of ‘Illusory Truth Effect’ in which people are easily or more likely to be misled with false information when they come across this information often”.
Busari further said no journalist worth the name should be oblivion of the intent of information disorder.
“This is why we must never share any unverified information no matter how good or appealing they look,” he cautioned.
He also backed this up with video clips on simple scenarios that turned bloody simply on the basis of information disorder published without being verified first.
Appreciating the trainer on behalf of the trainees, Mrs. Mercy Oyebiyi, a radio journalist, said they will strive to apply the lessons learnt in sharing information on their social media handles as well as in their news reporting, among others.
