Verify news sources, senior journalists tell Nigerians as elections hold tomorrow
By Oghale Mafuru
Ahead of the 2023 general elections billed to hold tomorrow to elect the next President as well as members of the two arms of the National Assembly, some senior journalists have advised Nigerians to subject every information to critical scrutiny; and ascertain the authenticity of its source before disseminating in order to checkmate the spread of fake news capable of precipitating violence and unrest in the polity.
Speaking to MARKETING EDGE separately, the media practitioners who decried the menace of false information, propaganda, lies and unverified claims which have dominated the polity since the commencement of political campaigns, submitted that certain segments of the not-so-easy-to-regulate social media platforms have inadvertently are responsible for the rise in the spread of fake news in the country.
Aliogo Ugo, a journalist and political analyst, said that the media landscape has become a safe haven for unqualified individuals who are not bound by professional ethics and code of conducts.
He cautions that “Fake news has its negative impacts. It can incite people to violence and cause tension in the polity. Fake news is not healthy. In economies where the media are strongly regulated, for instance in China, the media as well as the various social media platforms are heavily regulated by the government. In Nigeria, we have a lot of private media outfits and the social media is not regulated in Nigeria”.
Ugo states further, “Media proprietors should always be on the watch because most journalists can share fake news and then they want to run with it without authenticating the sources. You can’t really control it because the social media is not regulated, the blogs are not regulated. There is going to be a lot of fake stories. There is going to be stories about the naira, the elections, the election results and protests”.
On his part, Mudiaga Wright, CEO, EthiopeMedia, while stating that the elections scheduled to hold tomorrow will witness many unverified claims, misinformation of electoral process and outcomes, urge Nigerians to authenticate the sources of news before disseminating them.
In his words, “It is capable of sparking protests and most of this information will be circulated through several WhatsApps groups. On the day of voting on Saturday, you are going to see a lot of fake videos. You are going to see videos of 2019 that will be edited and published on WhatsApps groups telling you that there is election violence, that people stole ballot buses, telling you a lot of things. So, what we need to do, seriously speaking, is to verify; and that is where fact-checking comes in”.
He continues, “We have a lot of bloggers who don’t understand fact-checking, who don’t have these fact-checking tools. So, bloggers in order to drive traffic, publish all these fake stories to build a presence for themselves. At the end of the day, they realize that the story is fake but they have gotten the traffic that they want”.
It would be recalled that over the weeks leading to the 2023 general elections, the Nigerian political landscape has been inundated with an incredible amount of unverified information, claims and counter claims peddled across social media with intent to deceive, subvert and malign individuals of great repute.
Examples: Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television was reported to have openly endorsed a political candidate which was later debunked by him. The Central Bank of Nigeria was quoted to have rescinded his decision on the naira redesign policy which the agency publicly refuted. The EFCC was also reported to have raided the house of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC and recovered N400 billion of the new naira notes which was later debunked by the anti-graft agency.
Worst of all: The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC had to refute a claim which alleged that the body announced a possible postponement of the 2023 general elections by a week or two. INEC disassociated itself from this claim.
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