The International Centre for Investigative Reporting (The ICIR) will on Friday August 14, 2020 (today), officially launch the FactCheckHub – an independent, fact-checking platform aimed at combating misinformation in Africa using technology.
The FactCheckHub, an initiative of the ICIR with the support of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), is a non-partisan verification and fact checking platform with the primary aim of combating misinformation, disinformation, hoaxes and rumours about topical issues including COVID-19, elections, health and governance, among others.
The ICIR’s Executive Director, Dayo Aiyetan, said he established the platform because, there’s a lot of misinformation in the world, Nigeria inclusive.
“The first idea about setting up a fact-check operation occurred to us shortly in 2018 before Nigeria’s general election, because there was a lot of misinformation generated and we got involved in the process that led to the formation of CrosscheckNigeria, which brought together several newsrooms to work on fighting misinformation, particularly regarding the election.
“I said then that misinformation will not end after the election, and it has not. And it looks like every cycle around our life, our activities, we throw up all kinds of misinformation, whether it’s election, pandemic, like the Coronavirus has done; whether it’s about a natural disaster, an attack, whether it’s about our security situation, economic situation, about corruption.
“People will always cook up something, particularly now that governments are known to spread misinformation; powerful politicians are known to spread misinformation too.
“So, it has become a kind of organised crime in cyberspace. And so, we knew that we have been at the forefront of creating an architecture in the media to fight this malaise and we’ve spoken with other media houses about collaborating on this before.
“And so we thought that with the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive misinformation that came with it, that perhaps it was the right time to look at properly setting up a concrete operation to deal with it. That’s why we are setting up the FactCheckHub.”
Aiyetan noted that the FactCheckHub isn’t “just about publishing fact-check stories” but to empower every single citizen to be able to do fact-checking.
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He stated that the reason why misinformation spreads so much is because of the ignorance of the
ordinary person who just sees something and believes it.
“We want to engineer an environment where every single person can be a fact-checker, so that if an ordinary person sees misinformation or fake news, he or she will be able to identify, decipher that this is fake news so that they don’t share it.
“Rather than share it, they provide knowledge or information that this is not genuine. So, we want to spread this kind of thinking. We also want to use our fact-checking processes in a way that we’ll be able to reach the very ordinary Nigerians and Africans in the rural areas,” he said.
Also commenting, Rosemary Olufemi, a Senior Programme Officer at The ICIR in charge of the FactCheckHub, noted that “misinformation is a threat to democracy.
“It has negatively impacted elections, ignited communal clashes and deepened the challenges caused by epidemics such as the coronavirus and Ebola.”
“To provide accurate information and foster a fact-check culture among the general public spurred the intervention of the Factcheckhub project,” she added.
The project, which is supported by the IWPR, is in partnership with Africa Uncensored (AUC) in Nairobi, Kenya. The ICIR and AUC feed the Pan-Africa fact-checking website, www.FakeWatch.africa, which serves as a clearinghouse for information about fake news across the continent.
The International Centre for Investigative Reporting, ICIR, is an independent, non-profit news agency that seeks to promote transparency and accountability through robust and objective investigative reporting.
The ICIR’s mission is to promote good governance and entrench democratic values by reporting, exposing, and combating corruption among other visions.
