By Yunus S Saliu
Dubawa, a Nigeria’s foremost independent, transparent fact-checking platform has ended its 3-day fact-checking training program with the Gambian journalists on Wednesday, 4th August, 2021at the Kairaba Beach Hotel, Kololi.
Dubawa, a transnational verification and fact-checking project initiated by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) is an independent and non-partisan, accepting only to uphold the values of accuracy, balance, transparency, verification, and accountability in all its operations. And it aimed to institute a culture of truth and verification in public discourse and journalism through strategic partnerships between the media, government, civil society organisations technology plants and the public.
Within the 3-day training participated journalists covered different areas which included accountability journalism; information disorder ecosystem; introduction to fact-checking, fact-checking methodology; journalistic/fact-checking ethics; digital tools for fact-checking (theory and practical); data presentation and analysis for fact-checking; business models and among others
Commenting on the concluded fact-checking training, the Minister of Information and Communication Infrastructure Honorable Ebrima Sillah thanked the management of Premium Times for Investigative Journalism for chosen The Gambia to conduct the training.
He specially thanked the Executive Director Dapo Olorunyomi of PTCIJ for been in the country to work with The Gambia journalists to enhance their professionalism and also widen their scopes on election reporting techniques “which is even broader this time, fact-checking in an election time.”
He noted that The Gambia journalists in this present generation are very lucky, as there were no such opportunity of this nature “when we started our own journalism career in the country.”
He expressed delight on the important component of journalism which the participants were trained and hope that at the time when the entire country needs to know what’s going on they will be handy and provide the necessary information that will help make inform decision and choices especially for the electorates.
The Minister affirmed that Fact-checking especially for the government is extremely very critical because it help to decipher and know the real issue from all these hyper information having in the country, as disclosed that newspapers in the country that are always come up with credible information are what everyone looks up to especially in the morning to know exactly what the other sides of the public are saying to help make very good decision and come up with good data policies.
While acknowledging the PTCIJ, GPU and MAJaC, he hope seeing the impact of the training in the participants work from now on “as it can help reduce tension in the country, help bring harmony among the various political players especially at a time when almost everybody is an information dissemination agent. Therefore this training can help a lot and bring credibility to media fraternity,” he expressed with confidence.
Minister Sillah however assured Gambian journalists of government’s commitment and readiness through the Ministry of Information and Communication Infrastructure to work with them to see that this component of journalism, which is fact-checking, is enhance to help the people make inform choice and decision on social issues relating to election and public policy.
Dapo Olorunyomi, Executive Director, PTCIJ thanked the Honorable Minister of Information and Communication Infrastructure for witnessing the closing of the training out of his busy scheduled.
He disclosed that Dubawa which is a fact-checking platform often do this and it already open offices in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and typically what Dubawa does “is to train and initiate or start operation to build the capacity of our peers.”
He quickly added that it is very much more than that to do as it is now a very difficult time in history not only of the world “but in our own communities where we are having crises information and this crises expresses itself mostly through a lot of misinformation and at other times also disinformation.” Saying this has great implication for democracy implication for public health electoral integrity and public policy.
“All these have a way of affecting the communities, citizens and development that’s why fact-checking is particularly a useful tool,” he noted.
However, Messrs John Njie, Chairperson of Tango and San Mendy Managing Director of MAJaC present at the closing ceremony and as well delivered speeches at the closing ceremony of the three days fact-checking training.