Ouagadougou: The AFRICHECK platform in collaboration with Fasocheck equipped around twenty journalists from June 25 to 26 in Ouagadougou on factchecking, a practice consisting of the verification and rigorous processing of facts in order to deal with false information especially on social networks.
For the AFRICHECK consultant, it was necessary to equip journalists with regard to the proliferation of ‘Fakenews’ or false information on social networks.
‘For some time now, we have noted a fairly advanced proliferation of false information on social networks. With the advent of social networks, everyone becomes a journalist or broadcaster of information,’ lamented Mr. Ayivi.
For him, it is the time to equip journalists, the key players in information, to be able to verify the information circulating on social networks. This is so that they do not carry or disseminate false information to citizens because they constitute reliable sources for public opinion.
He appealed to journalists to practice fact-checking
on a daily basis. For him, this practice must become part of the journalist’s habits to be able to counter the profusion of false information circulating on the web.
According to him, this rigorous fact-checking practice allows media men and women to disseminate credible information.
The training was provided by Isidore Bouda and Adnan Sidibé from Fasockeck, the first fact-checking platform in Burkina Faso.
For journalist Gustave Konaté, this 48-hour training constitutes an additional skill.
For Mr. Konaté, the skills acquired during this session will allow him, in the current context of the country, to ‘distinguish false information from true information in order to inform readers’.
He also hoped that the training would be extended to all journalists but also to populations who are consumers of information.
For 48 hours, AFRICHECK provided around twenty journalists from Ouagadougou and the interior of the country with the tools necessary to deal effectively and efficiently with fake news.
The modules
focused, among other things, on understanding the disinformation environment, the concepts and real issues of disinformation, its harmful effects, online verification techniques and tools, journalistic ethics and the regulation of social networks.
AFRICHECK is a platform dedicated to monitoring and raising awareness among Internet users in favor of critical reading of information. Its objective is to establish a network of fact-checking journalists across the African continent.
Source: Burkina Information Agency