Muhammed Akindele Reports
Shereefdeen Ahmad, the editor-in-chief of The News Digest Press has trained members on the elements of fact-checking and information disorder.
The training, falling as part of his activities of the Countering Misinformation and Promoting Media Literacy Fellowship, was held on Monday, 30th October at the LC2 Hall.
The fellowship, sponsored by the embassy of the federal republic of Germany and supervised by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting(ICIR), was aimed at combating information disorder commonly known as ‘fake news’.
The members were exposed to the concept of information disorder, how to verify images, videos, websites,; how to write a fact-check report among other topics.
Speaking with The News Digest Press, one of the participants of the training,Abdulrasaq Kamaldeen,expressed his felicity towards the event, adding that it was his first time learning about fact-checking.
“As a learner, having knowledge about new things is what I desire most. My reaction towards the training is topnotch, because I was enlightened on how to verify misinformation, mal-information and disinformation.”
“My feeling was more fulfilled than I expected, because it’s an educational and conversational training,”he said.
Also, another participant, Abubakar Shamsudeen, said he has learnt more about the art and act of fact-checking.
“Some of the skills I learnt were the problems I and most journalists are facing these days due to lack of knowledge; we filled various fake forms online, jumped into conclusions by reviewing a mere edited image, videos and others.”
“Honestly, the training has equipped me with a process to verify all fake news, scam links, etc.”
Also, Amanatullah Yusuf on her part said:
I don’t regret attending the training because the knowledge I acquired is worth more than a thousand dollars and I am most grateful to the facilitator for conducting the free training and taking his time to make sure everyone was following.”
“I feel training like that should be held frequently and the trainees should make sure to put the knowledge acquired to utmost use,”she added.