Fact-checking can’t do much when people’s “dueling facts” are driven by values instead of knowledge, according to NeimanLab

While fact checking has become essential in this era of misinformation, disinformation and fake news, journalists have been urged to take effective news gathering and reporting seriously.

The gathering of 190 media practitioners/journalists in Lagos by Google was one of such avenues to better equip the Nigerian journalist by providing them with the needed knowledge on current news reporting tools.

Speaking on the essence of the Google Data Tools for Media Reporting training, Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, Google’s Communications and Public Affairs Manager, Anglophone West Africa, said the training was to help journalists “improve on their trade and ensure they utilise the google tools to push out factual and credible stories and it is important to Google to bring together various media practitioners under one roof to see how Google tools work and to help journalists write better news reports”.

“Today is also about bringing the media people into our world to perfect their work because the media is important to the society. When you succeed it benefits everyone. With the right information people are able to make well informed and better choices”.

“Knowing about and using these tools will also serve as a form of revenue generation for the media houses as it will pull traffic on their websites due to people seeking accurate, very well verified stories that are backed by data”.

Ogunlade noted that the training would be continuous as long as journalists showed interest in the training. “We trained over 600 people in 2018 in physical trainings and working with Code4Africa we launched an online product where journalists can go and learn. We were able to train 6,000 people through this across the continent, using the right online tools”, he said.

He however added that it was good the government was thinking of legislation towards ensuring that we can better manage misinformation and fake news.

For Mr David Ajikobi, Nigerian Editor at Africa Check, misleading information could prevent people from seeking or finding appropriate information.

Ajikobi however advised that if we have the right skills, right tools and do the right checking, our credibility will be rewarded as more people will be interested in our medium as source of information.

Story By: Theresa Igata