Farai Chitotombe
MASVINGO CITY-Veteran journalist, Cris Chinaka has taken the war against fake news to another level by going on whirlwind tour of the nation, engaging communities and the media on the contentious matter.
Fake news and misinformation have grown so rampant over the years aided by social media and technology which help in its spread with dire consequences in some cases especially during election season like the country is faced with.
Speaking to The Midweek Watch, Chinaka who is the Editor in Chief of a fact-checking media organisation, ZIMFACT, listed some of the basic hints that should highlight fake news bits to readers before they take them as gospel truth and also share across platforms as facts.
“First, people should be able to identify, who is the source of information that they are looking at since that can show this institution is normally not identified with credible information so the source is a pointer to the quality of information.
“Secondly, what is the record of that source of information where you might find out that the source has had a record of false information which means that information must not be taken as gospel truth and it must be cross checked,” said Chinaka.
He also stressed that fake news has become an important aspect of life where people share information on social media through reposting, retweeting and passing on links to site sources without cross checking with other truthful media organisations, these fact checking skills are not talked about enough in the interactive social media spaces.
“When you are dealing with information on the digital platforms, do not take it for granted that because there is a website, link or address that is included then it might be credible, there are ways to see if that is the link or it might have been played around with.
“Also, the images on the internet, you can tell sometimes purely by just looking at the frames that the frames have been played around with and edited and the picture colours are different and if it is voice, the gaps between words and sentences that do not connect are the telltale signs that the information has been manipulated.”
“The general advice around fake news is that, pause before you post which means you must exercise caution because you don’t know until you have verified and keeping in mind that everyone has a responsibility on what they post.”
Chinaka also went on to site the law that deals with the publishing and posting of falsehoods where he said, “under the Data Protection Act, ignorance is not an excuse as you could be sued for disseminating false information because you have not taken the extra step to verify whether its true or false.”
