By Ibrahim Abdul’Aziz
PREMIUM Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) has commenced a seven-day training for 21 journalists and bloggers across in the north east region .
The participants, were selected from applications nationwide, focuses on Criminal Justice and Anti -Corruption investigative reporting is expected to end on Saturday the 27 April, 2019.
Speaking earlier, Mbolo Eno, programme manager and advocacy at PTCIJ, said the training was designed to build the capacity of journalist to appreciate the critical essence of fact checking and investigative principles in the conduct of their professional and constitutional responsibility
‘’ This training is put together to improve investigation and fact checking of the criminal justice and accountability system nationwide,’’ hence he prevailed on the need for the participants not to relent in meeting the designed objectives .
Some participants of the workshop
“For a number of reasons, fact checking has become critical to the capacity of the media to function effectively in a democracy,” says Dapo Olorunyomi, executive director of PTCIJ.
Olorunyomi, who doubles as the Publisher of Premium Times, said truth has come under severe assault, most especially in recent time.
Akintunde Babatunde, programme officer at PTCIJ, in his presentations was emphatic that Journalists were constitutionally empowered to hold government accountable, by tracking budgets, monitoring, corruption and anti-corruption crusade.
‘’ Journalists need to brace up and looks like owls ,so as to bring sanity on criminal justice ,anti-corruption and other process of governance,’’ he urges.
Yunusa Yerwa , one of the participants from Borno state, said the training was timely and vital for self-development and journalism practice as the world become global village,adding that he is now equipped on the new trend of fact checking and would be able to distinguish between fact checking and investigative reporting.
“Before now , when I do reports, I just look out for one or two sources, thinking that I have balanced the story not knowing that you need to do fact checking to know if what they really dished-out is truth. But with this training, the narrative has changed,” said he.
The training co- funded by the European Union (EU) and the British Council drawn participants from government owned and private media as well as bloggers.
