As a trained journalist with over three decades experience, I have been worried over fake news and disinformation especially in this age of new media.
Moreover, as an online journalism practitioner, I am interested in the training to deepen my knowledge and be grounded enough to educate others; these, perhaps, are some of the things that motivated me to apply for the training.
Fake news/disinformation and hate speech. all of which have been on the front burner globally and as a journalist of many years standing, I want to know more about the topics beyond their lexicon and on the job training meaning I have.
Climate Change, which before the advent of COVID-19, had altered or threaded our lifestyle, is another compelling reason I developed interest in the training just to continue to learn more, network with other colleagues from other countries/continents and to take part in an international workshop outside Nigeria.
Before now. I have attended the following trainings/workshop locally and they are, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) organised one that took place in Nigeria topic of which was “Election Coverage”, Capacity building workshop: Nigeria Media 2.0 by The British Council, Nigerian Copyright organised “Introductory Course on Copyright and Collective Management, Annual CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Media Workshop.
However, non except the one organised by the British Council focused passing on fake news. It will be interesting to come and listen to your resource persons on what constitutes fake news, how to discover it and subsequently avoid them.
The topics becomes more interesting moreso now when everyone in my country brands any news from the social media as fake and practitioners in that sector as carriers of fake news.
