Over 17 participants including journalists, members of civil society organizations, and secondary school students attended a one-day capacity-building training in combating disinformation and misinformation in Wau, Western Bahr el Ghazal State, on Friday.
The program is part of the Sustainable Independence Media Activity Project organized and facilitated by DafyHateNow with support from USAID through the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX).
Speaking during the opening session, DafyHateNow regional representative, James Deng Dimo, said the contents of the training focused on disinformation, misinformation, discrimination, and gender equality towards adapting fact-checking, verification techniques, and gender transformative content.
“This training is very important for you the journalists, media, and the members of civil society organizations,” he said. “It will help you to understand the content of your stories whether the sources are true or false because in social media you can get a lot of stories that have been posted to create division among the people.”
“With this training, we are conducting today, it will be very easy for you to identify the sources of the story through the writing styles, photos, and how to report on gender issues,” Dimo added.
Magdalene Hussein, a female journalist, appreciated DefyHateNow for conducting the training for scribes in the state.
“I am very proud and happy to attend this training and we benefited a lot because the facilitator has given us all the necessary information and tools to identify false information in the challenging elections environment,” she said.
For his part, Santino Magot Bol a participant from a civil society organization, said the training equipped the participants with new skills.
“For me, the training was very fine and it has equipped us with some skills that we lacked before. With this knowledge, I am sure that from today onwards we will be able to improve our reporting,” he said. “For the last five years, it was very difficult to get capacity-building training opportunities within the country but we thank DefyHateNow for bringing this opportunity down to us. We encourage you to continue providing more in the future.”
Another female journalist, Rejoice Michael Charles, said that media practitioners need to be equipped with such knowledge to provide accurate information to the public.
“The sessions talked about the importance of fact-checking the claims and news articles using fact-checking tools and processes to report accurate and verified information, especially during the upcoming elections,” she said.
The participants were drawn from Wau and Jur-River counties of Western Bahr el Ghazal state.