By: Maima M. Wright
DUBAWA and The Stage Media-Liberia Check have ended the second day of a fact-checking training with at least twenty Liberian journalists drawn from various media institutions including print, broadcast, online and television.
The ongoing training is aimed at enhancing the capacity of Liberian journalists to venture into Fact-checking.
During day two of the workshop, Dubawa-Ghana Program Officer Ms. Caroline Anipa made a presentation on the “Introduction of Fact-checking.”
At the beginning of her session, Ms. Anipa defined fact-checking as the process of verifying information before publishing it or investigating claims made by an individual either through audio, virtual, statements social media posts among others.
She reminded the group of Liberian journalists that fact-checking began in the United States of America therefore the US has the highest number of fact-checking institutions in the world.
“Fact-checking has grown rapidly in modern journalism from forty-four practices in 2014 to two hundred and ninety by June 2020 and has spread across eighty-three countries.” She said.
She climaxed her section of the training by teaching the journalists the skills of a Fact-Checker while also differentiating reporting and fact-checking.
Following the first section, Mr. Began the second section of the day by presenting the Tools for fact-checking.
He said “patience, common sense, willingness to explore amongst others is the key skills for multimedia verification.”
He furthermore talked about the red flag questions and ended up illustrating how the journalists can use Google reserve image search and the Tin Eye picture tool to verify images and videos for Fact-checking purposes.
The final presentation of the day was made by the Executive Director of the Center for Media Studies and Peacebuilding (CEMESP) Malcolm Joseph.
He presented on key features of the Liberian Freedom of Information Law which was enacted by an act of legislation back in 2010.
The CEMESP boss encouraged the Liberian media to always file an FOI request when there are sticky or complex issues that they want answers for when Fact-checking.
Mr. Joseph thanked Dubawa and its Liberian counterpart for organizing the Fact-checking training for journalists.
Dubawa is a Fact-checking network based in Nigeria that operates in several African countries including Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone among others while The Stage Media is Liberia’s first Fact-checking online platform which began in 2020.
