BY DAYO ADESULU
Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr Sunday Dare has called for legislation, cooperation, persuasion and education to combat fake news.
He made this disclosure via a webinar while speaking on ‘Gaining Trust for the Media in the Era of Fake News’ organised by the International Centre for Journalists.
Dare who is an alumnus of the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) and former Knight International Journalism Fellow said it’s high time fake news was confronted.
His words: “Social media is thus multiplying the risks of fake news by amplifying its reach; once fake news lands on one platform are will most likely spread to others – fake news shared on Facebook, for instance, will be shared to Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and others. Misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and hoaxes are spreading at speeds and frequency never before seen just the reach is now global.
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”Like other countries, Nigeria has been at the receiving end. The 2015 General Election were targeted with fake news deployed by Cambridge Analytica working with AggregateIQ (AIQ). The Guardian (UK) reported a whistleblower Christopher Wylie as telling MPs the sole intent of publishing the violently graphic video was to intimidate voters. Wylie said, “Cambridge Analytica sent AggregateIQ the video after they [CA] got banned from several online ad networks because the graphic nature of the content violated the terms of service.”
”The video deployed by Cambridge Analytica, even though inaccurate and fake, was shared by many people on their social media accounts on a scale that has now perpetrated the falsehood of an Islamization agenda. It will be interesting to see what a commissioned research into the impact of that video will yield. the circulation of the video by unsuspecting persons underscores the reality that purveyors of fake news will always find the means and ways of releasing their manipulated contents into the wild knowing that people will share them without interrogating the authenticity or potential impact, which are tasks that mainstream journalists are conversant within their day to day activities.
”The role of the journalist as a gatekeeper has therefore become more relevant in exploring the political, technological, and societal contexts of misinformation in Nigeria. The social media environment in Nigeria has become even more toxic than the contentious atmosphere that Cambridge Analytica precipitated with its video in 2015. Successive general and local elections have seen an escalation in the deployment of fake news for launching attacks on opponents.
”The media has the responsibility of coming to the rescue. They must ensure that the public gets good, useful and truthful information, particularly now that people can act on the information they get online and on social media such that they could get hurt or even get killed.
”Anecdotal evidence shows that Nigerian youth spend at least four hours online daily, which implies they are exposed to fake news for the most part of the time they are online. This is why at the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development we continue to work towards ensuring that the opportunities offered by technological improvement are put to good use. Since the COVID-19 pandemic made virtual meetings preferable the social media and the internet generally has been deployed for educating and training the youth, which includes modules that teach responsible use of social media. This is the good use of social media and the internet; the youth and people, in general, should add the additional layer of using these platforms for the spread of truthful information and fighting harmful misinformation and disinformation.
”There is a journalists’ initiative is called CrossCheck Nigeria and is one of several fact-checking organisations dedicated to exposing fake news and preserving the reputation and credibility of well-researched and honest journalism. Another is FactCheck Nigeria. CrossCheck says its method is simple: to identify claims and posts it thinks are fake, investigate them, then publish the real version.
”This aspect was highlighted in early 2019, when the BBC organised a symposium on fake news, attracting some of the best thinkers on the issue in Nigeria. Among them was the Nigerian Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka, who described the threat thus: “I’ve said this before that fake news may cause World War 3 and that fake news will be started by a Nigerian.” Witness the forcing of the country’s nationalities “into ethno-tribal cocoons,” he argues.
”It is comforting to learn that ICFJ is already championing solutions in form of fact-checking through a partnership with four media houses namely; Africa Check, The Cable Newspapers, Dubawa (Premium Times Investigative Journalism Centre (PTIJC), and the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR).
”I urge the team to work with the Ministry of Information and Culture, which acknowledged that fake news has consequences on all facets of life and in 2019 launch a campaign against fake news, which has been effective. By pooling efforts and resources as well as the additional advantage of government buy-in, the campaign against fake news would be scaled up to make an even greater impact.
”The media and journalists should see the need to counter fake news as an opportunity to claw back the influence lost to the emergence of the situation that is well covered in my book, “We Are All Journalists”. The growth of social media, technology and the internet has made everyone a journalist, all that is needed is a connected smartphone. But the tasks of gatekeeping, verification and contextualizing still fall to the career media practitioners and they must pick up the gauntlet. The opportunity it offers is one that will drive traffic to the websites of organizations that have proven themselves as credible and reliable as fact-checkers.
”Let us note that, as journalists, adopting an indifferent stance towards fake new is not an option because of the damage that can result. We must therefore tap into what ICFJ and its partners have on offer to equip ourselves as journalist fact-checkers.”
