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| Participants at an earlier FactCheckAfrica and Wikimedia Nigeria workshop on information integrity. File photograph. Lukman Adeoti / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0. |
Journalists across West Africa should build stronger professional networks to improve their response to disinformation, Maria Sanchez, a coordinator at the Foundation for the Internationalisation of Public Administrations (FIAP), has said.
Sanchez spoke in Lagos on Tuesday, 10 November, at a workshop organised by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in partnership with FIAP to develop journalists’ skills in addressing misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.
She linked closer cooperation among media practitioners to better communication and regional development. She also called for greater engagement with communities, describing journalists and civil society organisations as important connections between citizens and government institutions.
That responsibility, she said, extends beyond national capitals, making engagement with communities outside major administrative centres an essential part of their work. FIAP is a Spanish public-sector organisation that supports public administration and democratic governance through international cooperation.
Ebunoluwa Olafusi, editor of CableCheck, addressed the responsibilities journalists must retain as artificial intelligence becomes more widely available.
She advised reporters to treat AI as a supporting tool while keeping control of editorial decisions. Journalists, she said, must continue to exercise professional judgement and ensure that their use of technology preserves accuracy, credibility and ethical standards.
Olafusi identified deepfakes and other synthetic content as growing concerns, citing the use of computer-generated photographs, audio recordings and videos to deceive audiences. She urged practitioners to improve their digital verification skills so they could recognise fabricated material and content that had undergone manipulation.
She also encouraged journalists to question information before accepting it, assessing the potential effect of a claim on the public when deciding whether it required a fact-check.
Such scrutiny, she said, should cover the claim itself, its source and the website or social media account circulating it. Photographs and videos also require examination before publication.
Olafusi advocated reporting centred on public issues and said journalists’ responsibility to protect audiences from misleading information remained central to their work.
The workshop also provided an opportunity for ECOWAS to outline its regional response. The commission told participants that it had trained more than 500 journalists across 12 member states in areas including fact-checking, digital verification, open-source intelligence and media literacy.
In remarks delivered on his behalf, ECOWAS Director of Communication Joel Ahofodji urged practitioners to give verification priority over speed, particularly when covering elections, political transitions and security developments.
He called for cooperation between journalists and Wikipedia editors to improve access to credible, properly sourced information. He also cautioned that efforts to counter disinformation must preserve freedom of expression, media independence and access to information, rather than provide grounds for censorship.