The Executive Director of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), Motunrayo Alaka, has emphasized that verification remains the core of credible journalism.
She made the assertion on an X Space themed “Technology: The double-edged force behind misinformation and its detection”, on Tuesday.
She alerted that the situation at hand is will continue to grow at scale, hence the need for an increase in fact checkers and fact checking organizations.
“What we have on our hands is a situation that will continue to grow at scale
“Verification is the core of journalism, fact checkers, fact checking organizations are needed as an addition to the core tradition of news rooms to fact check so the burden is on newsrooms to ensure that those traditional gate keeping roles are advanced for the technology.” She said.
Alaka also urged media houses to invest in ups killing their teams so as so to raise the bar for verification practices.
She also stated that whilst digital tools are important and essential, the conventional methods that include placing calls, reviewing documents should not be left out.
“Newsrooms must skill up their teams to raise the bar for verification because it is the core for journalism, it is not something that is outsourced fully, it should be a core part because there is no journalism outside verification.
“Journalism is what it is because it is about truth.
“While digital tools are important, the old school tools of calling somebody, checking documents are not left out. Newsrooms need to put this at the core.”
In his remark, Editor, Dubawa NG, Femi Busari, highlighted that the AI is not the only tech challenge currently being faced.
He stated that while AI tools can be helpful in getting faster results, it can not substitute the human instinct, knowledge of fact checking or investigative journalism .
“AI is not the only tech challenge we have at hand
“Any other digital tool that you deploy in your work as a journalist is just a tool to help you reach your answer faster. It is never a substitute to your human instinct or knowledge of fact checking or investigative journalism that you need to deploy all the time.
“As a fact checker you need to be able to determine the credibility of the source of the information and that is not the work you leave for AI or digital technology entirely.
“There are some tools that can help you map where a claim is coming from but at the end of the day you need to put all of the information together to determine whether the source is credible and also whether the source has some form of motivation or not.”
He also stressed the need for a regulation of AI.
“Anyone who is putting out anything has to take some responsibility. We need to define that responsibility either a state or federal level, and come up with regulation.” He said while calling for multi-stakeholder’s engagement.
The Head of Factcheck Desk, The Cable underscored the need for increased advocacy and investment in media and information literacy (MIL), particularly among the current generation.
“We need to do more advocacy. Investing more in media information literacy is essential in the generation that we are.
“We need to teach people how to spot fake news.”
David Ajikobi, Nigerian Editor, AfricaCheck in his closing remark, proffered proactive engagement as a solution to tackling misinformation.
“One of the solution I will stick to is engagement. I think we need to possibly engage and now react. “