For quite a long time, Uganda’s communication has been greatly affected by the spread of false information and this has led to different conflicts and instabilities in the country.
People with negative intentions use false information to attract people’s attention to fulfill their personal objectives through mis and disinformation.
Politicians also use false information to tarnish their opponents images through publishing false images and videos that show their failure to serve the people they lead, Anti Vaxers use false information to discourage people from being vaccinated among others. Because people receive and accept such information before proving the truth out of them, they end up suffer the consequences of mis and disinformation.
In this, Debunk Media Initiative initiated the idea of fighting the spread of false information in the country through fact checking information and giving it to the audience in the fact checked version especially when proved to be wrong. This has helped to give people true information for them to get the right perceptions that they need.
Asif their fact checking was not enough, they went ahead and trained journalists and impacted them with skills to fact check the information through the stories they give to their audience.
This is aimed at empowering them to give out the right information to avoid misleading people since journalists attract a lot of people.
During the two days Fact Checking training that took place at the Media Challenge Initiative offices in Kampala, from 19th – 20th June 2024, Fact Checking editor at Debunk Media Initiative Rukia Nabbanja discussed different forms of false information that people use to mislead people.
She advised journalists that since facts are backed by evidence, they should make sure that before they give out any information, they should check if it puts people’s lives at risk, the decisions the public have to make, how prominent the person who shared the information is, among other issues, to consider while thinking of giving out information to the public.
She trained journalists about the fact checking process to help them spread true and verified stories while doing their work.
In the same way Edgar Mathew Karuhanga, a fact checker and one of the founders of Debunk Media Initiative trained journalists about the tools used in factchecking. These tools make it easy for them to verify and prove where the images or videos where taken, who took them, and when they were taken.
He spotted how the different tools are used and how to differentiate the AL images from the original images. This opened up the journalists eyes towards verifying information before being spread to the public.
Debunk Media Initiative challenged the public to avoid spreading every information that they receive before verifying it since some people misinform others who fall into traps of misinforming people and end up fulfilling the intentions of those who give them the information.
