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The Head of Journalism and Media Studies at the School of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), Prof. Gifty Appiah-Adjei, has urged media practitioners to strengthen their fact-checking and verification skills to help to combat the growing spread of false information in the country.
She said information disorder was polluting the media ecosystem, and gradually undermining public trust in the media, making it difficult for citizens to make informed decisions based on credible information.
“Journalism is supposed to provide credible and accurate information, but information disorder is polluting the media ecosystem and it undermines public trust,” she said.
Prof. Appiah-Adjei made the call at a capacity-building workshop organised by the Centre for Communication Education Research and Professional Development (CCERPD), in collaboration with the School of Communication and Media Studies, UEW and a media development organisation, Penplusbytes, at Winneba in the Central Region last Thursday.
The two-day workshop, held on the theme: “Tackling Information Disorder, AI-Driven Fake News, and Ethical Journalism through Media and Information Literacy Skills”, brought together journalists and media professionals for practical training in ethical reporting, digital verification and media literacy.
It also formed part of efforts by the centre to provide professional development opportunities for media practitioners and journalism educators, particularly within the Central Region.
Prof. Appiah-Adjei explained that the inability to distinguish between truthful and false information online made it necessary for journalists to be equipped with media and information literacy skills to prevent them from falling victim to misinformation while sourcing stories.
She said although artificial intelligence (AI) posed challenges to journalism practice, it could also be used positively to support journalistic work.
“AI can help journalists in their research. AI can help journalists in instances where they don't have images to generate them, but let your audience know that this image is AI-generated,” she said.
Prof. Appiah-Adjei, however, cautioned journalists against depending solely on artificial intelligence to produce stories.
“It should help us in developing our story. It shouldn't generate our stories for us,” she added.
A Research Fellow at the CCERPD, Dr Rainbow Sackey, also said the growing circulation of false information online and on traditional media platforms had made it increasingly difficult for the public to determine what was credible.
“If you go online, and even if you are listening to the traditional media and they are disseminating information, you don't even know whether the information is true or false,” he said.
He said some journalists unknowingly relied on unverified information from social media platforms in producing stories, a situation he described as dangerous to the credibility of the media.
“The media practitioners that we trust to give us accurate, truthful information don't even have the ability to recognise that this information they are churning out may not be truthful,” Dr Sackey said.
Therefore, he said, the workshop aimed to train media practitioners to enable them to identify fake news, misinformation, disinformation, mal-information and AI-generated deepfake content.
Programme Manager at Penplusbytes, Emmanuel Koranteng Asomani, said journalists must continue to evolve and adapt to technological changes affecting media practice.
“Society has evolved, and it's just right that as journalists we also evolve in the way we do things,” he said.
He said although AI was being used to spread false information, it could also be leveraged to combat misinformation.
He said some digital verification tools such as Google Reverse Image Search, TinEye and Yandex would help media practitioners to verify images and online content before publication.
He added that improving media and information literacy among journalists and the public would help people to critically assess information they encountered online and to reduce the harmful impact of misinformation in society.
