Journalists have been encouraged to fight the spread of misinformation and disinformation through fact-checking.
This came out at the official launch of FactCheck Zimbabwe, a media organisation that focuses on verifying information and promoting media literacy.
The launch coincided with the belated commemoration of the International Day of Fact-Checking on April 2.
Speaking at the launch, FactCheckZW Director, Lifaqane Nare said fact-checking is a weapon to deal with misinformation and disinformation.
“Sometimes it is not always necessary to criminalise the spread of fake news. You may find that sometimes people peddle fake news without intention to harm,” Nare said.
Nare said it is important to have a sharp eye on fake news because often people take information that is already in the public domain and use it to generate the wrong content.
“At times it is also a case of poor journalism where a journalist fails to understand the context of what they are reporting on. They may fail to interpret the information they have correctly hence end up giving the wrong information to the public. When you come across information try and check with various sources, read widely and verify if the information is true or not before publishing,” she said.
The keynote speaker, Dr Mphathisi Ndlovu from the National University of Science and Technology said there is a need to teach social media content consumers how to verify the information they are exposed to on social media platforms.
“The ability to share and disseminate falsehoods has become popular. This affects people’s ability to make the right decisions. Is it possible for people to make informed decisions when they are exposed to such falsehoods, especially now at the time of elections? The creation and dissemination of news has been decentred as we now have a lot of citizen journalism.”
“If more people have the ability to create news, what can be done to gate-keep what they consume? Journalists are no longer the sole custodians of news creation. Through social media, news is being created by societies without journalism ethics and this is creating information disorders.”
Dr Ndlovu added “Mainstream media should be used to verify information and check the authenticity of news that one may not be sure of. People can check if the news they consume has been reported on by mainstream outlets. That is another way of fact-checking.”
