By: Nyima Sillah
Madi Jobarteh, Human Right Activist has said one of the great things to happen in the elections or to The Gambia is the emerged of fact-checking as it brought sanity in the country.
Mr. Jobarteh highlighted this point during a daylong learning and experience sharing session on combating fake news in The Gambia organized by the Center for Research and Policy (CRP), held on the 10th February 2022, at Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara Conference Centre, Bijilo.
“Fact checkers has brought a lot of sanity in our election period it is great that we have fact checkers and I think this culture needs to grow because fact-checking is not just connected to elections. It happens every day and perpetrators can be all over the place,” he added.
Also, he said the impact of fake news in the society is huge as it can damage peace, stability and can make people lose confident in the government. “This is why fact checkers have very important role to bring that sanity to remove fiction from fact and to make sure that the truth prevails all the time,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mariama Danso, Fact Check The Gambia, also said: recently most of the news that circulates faster tent to be fake and the public sees nothing wrong in sharing fake news specially on social media which is a tool use by many to share fake news in the country
“This been the reason led to the establishment of fact check centre but many a times are refers to as journalist and I would say we are not journalist rather an advocacy oriented towards misinformation, disinformation countering but our major partners in our work are the journalists,” she noted.
She added that the event is to build partnership among media, the fact checkers and civil society for the fight against misinformation, disinformation in The Gambia for the purpose of avoiding duplication of faults and promoting the sharing of credible and reliable information.
However, Muhammed S. Bah, President of the Gambia Press Union said “the media should be in the forefront in combating hate speech, disinformation and misinformation. We should not allow ourselves to be used as agents of hate speech and false news. Also, the media has more works ahead in the upcoming parliamentary elections. We should ensure to develop the culture of fact checking and constantly debunk fake news and hate speech to help consolidate our democracy,” he said.
Honorable Karamba Jawo, “We the journalist need to be extremely careful with the types of stories that we read from the web I know is common now for journalists to pick stories from anywhere and post them as news, but we should not allow ourselves to be conductors of fake news. We should be careful on what we carry on our platforms and always verify before publication.”