ZimFact Urges Journalists To Be Scientific Statistical Information

Independent, media watchdog, Zimbabwe Online Fact Checking (ZIMFACT) has urged Zimbabwean journalists to circulate correct statistical information while reporting to reduce inaccuracies that would misled the citizens.
Addressing Journalists on Wednesday at Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe workshop on Investigative journalism training on demystifying government budgets and reporting corruption around public finance in Harare, Ernest Mudzengi said journalists must take issues of figures seriously especially as regards political rallies.
“If possible journalists must inquire the number from the drone cameras or something that can be able to detect factual number of people in attendance, ” Mudzengi said.
He added: “Fact checking is a set of tools and practices that allow people to check and verify information to say, fact checking is not only about believe saying he said that they were 62 000 people at the rally and then you say I don’t believe this would happen Mwonzora (MDC-T president Douglas Mwonzora) does not have people.
“You said that from your conviction but in fact checking we actually need tools and to institutionalize practices to check whether or not what Mr (Morgan) Komichi said is true, that’s what is called fact checking it’s not about beliefs obviously in the Christian life we read God created the heavens and the earth, you don’t have to fact check but you need to believe but in this context we want to check whether this is the truth or false, we want it to be demonstrated.”
Mudzengi told the journalists that ZimFact is working tirelessly to fight misinformation and disinformation.
“One thing we need to fight is misinformation and disinformation, some stories might be true but they might be misinforming and disinforming meaning their motive might be to manipulate its audience. Communication is the reality of the people, the context people are operating. In this context the content is good and is also bad, this has to do with the appropriateness, relevancy of a message that needs to be checked.
He added journalist must make use of tools and practices that are used to verify information before they establish it.
Mudzengi said, “Journalist must always read past the headlines, check the outlets that is the credibility of the news outlet, Check publishing date and time to see if the story is a recent story or it’s a story that happened a long time back. Should question the author, they must check if the author is well known for writing credible stories if so then one should use that story.”
He added that links and sources used in a story must always be questionable to say are theses links and sources used in this story credible. One must always take note of the pictures, one must always look for original pictures to say is this picture not tempered with if not then that story is worthy using. Another procedure for fact checking is to check if other publications have written the same story, if it is found in one publication you need to question the credibility of that story.