A Nation Media Group staff displays a copy of the Daily Nation during the Newspaper in Education program launch at Effort Junior School in Kirinyaga County on May 29, 2024.
With the heightened proliferation of false information in the ecosystem, the fight to sustain information integrity must no longer remain reactive, where each media house rushes to stamp ‘FAKE’ on false news cards and front pages purporting to originate from them.
It calls for a big-picture proactive approach, involving the public and the entire media fraternity.
According to Ms Lynette Mukami, the Nation’s editor for social media, search and analytics, the group puts out average four disclaimers a week to counter false information.
However, during peak political seasons, these increase to several in just a day. The situation is the same or worse for other media houses.
Imprinting false information on the branded properties of media houses is the preferred tool for people who wish to paint a media house in a bad light because of perceived negative coverage, or who want to drive a political agenda riding on the believability of the media house.
The trouble with the misuse of media organisations’ logos for misinformation and disinformation is that it erodes public trust in all journalism, not only in the targeted media house.
Undermining a product of journalism should, therefore, be viewed as a shared problem.
All media houses must fact-check to discredit fakes, irrespective of which platform is targeted as a vessel for disinformation.
Unfortunately, every time false information is unleashed on social media, it is impossible for the truth to catch up with it, as lies spread faster.
For every disclaimer issued by a media house, there are probably a million people who have already believed the false information.
A study conducted by three Massachusetts Institute of Technology scholars in 2018 found that false news spreads faster on social media than true news.
At the time, false news stories were 70 per cent more likely to be retweeted than true stories.
The researchers also found that it took true stories six times as long to reach 1,500 people as it did for false stories to reach the same number of people.
The situation is obviously worse today with the use of bots to send out false information.
The media must acknowledge that misinformation and disinformation are a serious problem, speak about it and mount consistent campaigns.
Prioritising media literacy will make the ecosystem unsustainable for false information.
The entire media fraternity has a responsibility to conduct media literacy sessions for the public. It must teach them how to detect fakes, and expose them to simple and easy to use tools.
The public must be reminded constantly that in times of contested politics, such as these, people weaponise statements and voices to push their various agendas.
News is being weaponised for social and political gains and information is being manipulated at will.
Therefore, for every alarming or odd statement, the public must first seek to verify before sharing on Facebook, X, Instagram or WhatsApp.
The easiest way to verify a news card, for example, is to go to the media product’s website or social media page.
The public must no longer be passive receptors of information, but active partakers who must verify for themselves. They must be reminded to trust their instincts to verify information before forwarding it.
For the public to become discerning, the media must use every available opportunity to drive this message home.
The Media Council of Kenya, the Kenya Editors Guild, the Kenya Union of Journalists and all other stakeholders in media must make it their business to protect information integrity in a shared approach.
As Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa says: Without facts, we can’t have truth. Without truth, we can’t have trust. Without these three, we cannot have a shared reality, and we cannot even begin to solve any of the world’s problems.
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