Three months ago, Broadcast Journalist, Zainab Sanni and Content writer Moh’d Muhydeen Olakunle started NewsVerifier.Africa now a one-stop-shop for “Fact-Checking” as part of efforts quest to combat misinformation and disinformation in Africa.
In this interview with www.mediacareerng.org Zainab speaks on their experience and plans to step up their fact-checking campaign.
Three months after the launch of the one-stop fact-checking page, how well are you achieving the goal for the initiative?
The idea behind NewsVerifier.Africa was to make fact-checking stories readily available and concise for readers so we started off publishing the verifications on all social media platforms, which is where many fake stories originate from. In that short while, we organically reached an average of 1500 people monthly, with many reviews and constant requests to fact check news items.
The initial goal wasn’t to be a one-stop fact-checking platform but along the line, it became the only feasible goal. The positive reviews have been encouraging and it feels like we are steadily achieving our goals for N-VA.
What is your assessment of the fact-checking being done by the various organizations?
Fact-checking is time-consuming, not about breaking news, but getting the facts right.
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And from what we have seen so far, these platforms are doing the best that they can, especially in a continent where most countries do not have easily accessible data.
Most of these platforms have resources spanning continental and international spaces to conduct deep fact checks on various claims and stories but the truth is there is so much to debunk out there and we need more local media taking up fact-checking as a routine feature of their news desk
What needs to be done to prevent publications of unverified reports?
Prevention they say is better than cure but with fact-checking, that can be hard because you never can tell until it out.
First, we need to create in people a conscious need to verify from credible sources before believing any information out there. This is going to form a large part of the work we will do as we intend to not only make fact-checking appealing but also utilise edutainment to increase awareness about fake news and its impact.
Other steps include double checks of news reports by publishers. Digital footprints are hard to erase at times and SEO chains make it complicated, hence, reports should be double-checked, editors should not encourage click baits and quoting unverifiable sources. In a situation where these reports have been published before its confirmation and turns out to be false, the publisher should delete it from their multimedia platforms and websites and release a disclaimer too.
You recently posted on facebook that fact-checking is expensive. How expensive is it?
At that point when we made the announcement for production of the podcast, we were re-assessing our goals after three months of operations and trying to put in place structures that would ensure our credibility is not in doubt.
From getting a website to producing and distributing our podcasts, creating audience-friendly graphics, company registration and getting verified by the International Fact-Checking Network Registration, a lot of money is going to be involved.
There are also other expenses including data purchase, maintaining researchers, accessing data sets and podcast production. Considering that it is largely unpaid work, the running costs can be discouraging
Any other plan apart from the podcast in your fact-checking work?
From the time we made that announcement, we have gotten volunteer and partnership requests which we intend to maximise.
We are launching a website and part of our content includes a segment fully dedicated to image and video verification since these are readily exploited tools for propaganda and fake news, especially on Facebook and Whatsapp
We also intend to utilise entertainment for fact-checking but you will have to wait to find out how.
Great One Miss Oyiza, keep doing a great job