Course Title: – Journalism: Fact-Checking & Detecting Fake News

Description (course content) – Fact check training is designed to help content creators (Digital and Mainstream) come to terms with modern digital tools and world standard practice. This course will include understanding Facts and Opinions, Facts analyses and presentation, verification steps and tools, understanding media and information literacy (MIL), How to be safe and legal online.

For whom: 

• Freelance and independent content creators
• Media practitioners
• Advocates and social commentators / Analysts
• Budding and professional journalists
• Mass communication students
• Public Relation Officers

Nigerians need to understand that Fake news is the new biggest buzz word: We see it all over our televisions, it is always motioned on the radio, and it is in the paper and on the Web. It is a word thrown around within the political circle. It is a lifestyle now that if anyone doesn’t agree with a report! The way out is to call it fake news or term it hates speech.

There is so much misinformation spread around that audiences no longer know what to believe. The concept of fake news, while often used to demean an unflattering report, is also a legitimate problem. The line between journalism and other content has blurred, making it more important than ever for all writers, regardless of their platform, to verify their facts.

At the end of the course participants should be able to: 

• Differentiate between facts and opinion
• Fact-check any story and present findings
• Understand Why information literacy matter
• Appreciate different stages of Media literacy
• Be conversant with fact-checking tools
• Produce one story they have fact-checked

Duration: 2 days

16th & 17th March 2021