Olorunyomi to journalists: Use fact-check, digital literacy tools to save democracy from disinformation

Dapo Olorunyomi, publisher of Premium Times Newspaper and founder of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), says journalists need to use fact-checking and digital literacy tools to fight information disorder in Nigeria.

Olorunyomi spoke on Friday during the 2023 Wole Soyinka Centre amplified in-depth media conference and awards for investigative reporting in Nigeria.

 The conference is a two-day physical and virtual event that began on Friday at the Continental Hotel in Abuja.

He said the digital age has brought about information disorder which is now seeking to ravage the values of truth and accuracy in journalism practice.

Olorunyomi said the emergence of the digital age crumbled many media businesses in the 90s noting that the country and other nations on the continent were not prepared for it.

“I now want to talk about the challenges that we face in the contemporary modern era as we try to do journalism and how our journalism actually either enables or constrains the development of democracy,” he said.

“I will offer briefly what looks like mere history and I want us to cast our minds back to the years of 1995 in Nigeria.

“Something was happening at that time and what was happening in our country which was also happening in other parts of the world was a full emergence of the digital age. The digital age suddenly arrived and I argue here that we were not quite prepared in Nigeria.

“You will notice that in Nigeria and other African countries, we had a failure in the media, and many of the newspapers were shutting down.

“They were failing in business modules and there was no adequate way to explain why this was so and here I explain that it was the failure to understand the intricate logic of the digital age that arrived and that that age ultimately renewed and restructured the whole context and meaning of how we deal in journalism and media.

“From how we cover the stories, how we distribute the stories and how the whole enterprise of journalism will be financed.

“It’s a challenge for journalism today if we are going to save our democracy to ensure that fact-checking and media and digital literacy protocols become the very fundamental part of our practice and that indeed, newsrooms would do well to reinforce the factual basis of their reporting by incorporating fact-checking protocols in reporting.”

 Some of the speakers at the conference included Kolapo Olapoju, editor of TheCable Newspaper, Motunrayo Alaka, executive director of Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), Franca Aiyetan, spokesperson of National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and Amina Salihu, deputy director of MacArthur Foundation.

Others are Emiene Erameh, managing editor, AllWomen Media, Naziru Abubakar, executive director of Daily Trust Newspaper, Chioma Agwuegbo, executive director, TechHerNG, Dili Ezughah, director-general of Nigerian Press Council,  and Lanre Arogundade, executive director, International Press Centre (IPC) among others.