MARTIN MAWAYA
GWERU-Journalists have been warned against colluding with politicians to churn out propaganda, as they risk losing credibility and becoming cheerleaders for hate politics and intolerance.
Speaking on the sidelines of a fact-checking engagement meeting in Gweru, Zimfact Editor-in-Chief Cris Chinaka urged journalists to verify facts to avoid misinformation and mal-information.
He said media personnel must provide high-quality journalism in order to build public trust and correct fake news and disinformation.
“The media has an extra responsibility during election time, to verify any information that they are reporting on, disseminating and to put the sources of information to a test about truthfulness of that information and whether that information is verifiable or not.
“Otherwise, the media runs the risk of being reduced to propaganda tools that disseminate information that may not be truthful and that is outright malicious and misleading.
“What it means therefore is that the electorate suffers as a result by not getting to know the truth,” he said.
The veteran journalist added that there is a lot of political information churned out during election season which may not be true, presented out of context and misleading.
He said in the case of Zimbabwe a lot of information comes in threefold, misinformation, outright disinformation organized by the people and mal- information created by people during election times.
Chinaka added that his organization is in the process of promoting news literacy and strong professional journalism throughout the country.
“The process of fact-checking must be extended to all media houses and many professionals as soon as possible during elections. A lot of mainstream media is open to strengthening their quality control systems, some of them are open to train their own staff in fact-checking,” said Chinaka.
He says politicians should use this election period to build up their profiles as credible sources of information, adding that there are dangers of disseminating fake news.
