Kogi, Bayelsa, Imo Guber election: IPC trains 80 journalists

The International Press Centre (IPC) has trained both male and female journalists from Kogi, Bayelsa, and Imo ahead of the governorship elections.

The training involved the broadcast, print, and online media in the three states that have been reporting on the electoral processes and would be on election duty on November 11.

The training for Kogi journalists was held at Hawthorn Suites & Hotels, Abuja, FCT, on October 27 and 28, while journalists from Bayelsa and Imo states, respectively, had their training on October 30 and 31 and November 2 and 3 at the Echelon Heights Hotel, Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

The workshops are part of the activities under the iVerify Fact-Checking project, whose objective is to strengthen national capacities to prevent and mitigate the threats of disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech to the integrity of electoral information and democracy.

At the end of the training, the group exercises, and the plenary discussions, participants in the three workshops resolved to accept the obligation of setting a public interest agenda for the governorship elections in the three states.

They also resolved to make it a professional and ethical duty to enhance the integrity of electoral information by not only avoiding but also countering disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech, and also embracing and regularly making use of the fact-checking methods and digital tools to which they were exposed.

Further, they resolved to imbibe the art of questioning as a valuable skill necessary for being detectives of disinformation and misinformation, ensuring factual accuracy of electoral reports, particularly by setting aside personal biases and avoiding presenting opinions as facts, and upholding accountability journalism at elections by making key electoral stakeholders such as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the political parties, the candidates, and the law enforcement and security agencies accountable to the public.

The participants also agreed to ensure the factual accuracy of electoral reports, particularly by setting aside personal biases and avoiding presenting opinions as facts, to take all professional steps to deescalate conflict and assist with conflict management since violent conflicts are threats to elections and democracy, to also utilise and sensitise citizens on IPC’s iVerify platform, which is a useful technology-driven system to combat electoral information disorder, and to share the knowledge and skills gained from the workshop with other colleagues so that collectively they can provide reliable electoral information for the citizens.

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