Nigeria Institute of Journalism (NIJ) Provost Gbemiga Ogunleye has called on media houses to revive the culture of fact-checking as a tool to restore credibility.
Ogunleye spoke in Lagos at a fact-checking and investigative journalism training organised for select journalists by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ).
Noting that fact-checking was not a new thing, Ogunleye said reviving the practice would aid the media to overcome the current funding crisis plaguing media outfits.
“You will agree with me that the media is in crisis now in terms of funding. In other words, there are media houses that cannot pay salary as at when due.
“Part of the crisis is the issue of credibility of the stories that the media publish. One of the reasons in my view, is because the media has been losing credibility in the last couple of years. Many reputable practitioners have for obvious reasons, been lost to the banking, telecommunication and oil and gas sector. The effect of this is that the media is losing people who can really do quality control.
“So, there is need for media houses to go back to the old values of fact-checking. Doing this will enhance the credibility of what the media publish.
“The media comes in to fact-check the claims political leaders make so the public is not misled into making decisions. That is why we encourage that the media landscape today should be more vigorous in what we publish; they should go through all the procedures of fact-checking.
“I think what is more important is that the concept/need for fact-checking should be imbibed. It is left for newsrooms to choose how to do it. So that if someone makes a claim and you cannot immediately verify it, you can do that later and update your story.
“What is critical for me is the need to equip their reporters with fact checking skills for them to do accurate reports,” he said.
Media trainer Akintunde Babatunde advocated the need for media houses to establish fact-checking desks to ensure the quality of news delivery was rooted in verification.
He said the PTCIJ understood that must of the narratives in public space were devoid of accurate facts and sometimes have alternative facts.
“These realities brought about the fact that we need to conduct trainings for journalists to be able to track fake news and verify using technology tools. When newsrooms have a culture of saying let us have a fact checking desk this desk will be directly responsible for verification of news and try to ensure the stories that newsrooms publish are deeply rooted in verification.
“Sometimes when we publish stories, we fail to try as much as possible to identify the truthfulness of the news. So, when we have fact checking desk, after stories have been published, they will then get the claims in the statement that are made by news sources using skills and online tools.”
