No fewer than 40 journalists in southwest states have been trained by the International Press Centre (IPC) about information disorder and how to deploy tools to fact-check.
The journalists were drawn from several media organisations in Lagos, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, and Ogun states to participate in a 2-day training tagged “Credible Elections and Democratic Governance: Capacity Building on Combatting Information Disorder” which was funded by the European Union (EU).
In her welcome address, the IPC Programme Officer, Melody Akinjiyan, disclosed that the EU funded the programme and IPC implemented the training.
She said: ”We are confronted with the daunting challenge of combatting misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda in an era defined by the rapid dissemination of information.
“This training therefore serves as a beacon of hope, illuminating the path towards a more informed, vigilant, and resilient media landscape”.
The Executive Director of IPC, Lanre Arogundade explained that the training was to inculcate fact-checking of information.
He said: “This training is to ensure that journalists report elections and Electoral processes factually, and accurately and to ensure that we fact-check the necessary information. After elections, we need to hold our leaders accountable so we need to look at their campaign promises and assess their state of implementation, not just from the view of the government but the view of the people by verifying claims and facts.
“We believe that by doing that we can help our people solve some of their problems, which is called solution-driven journalism. Our duty as a journalist is to ensure we keep leaders accountable for their promises”.
