A two-day workshop on ‘Fact Checking and Verification Techniques in News Reporting’ began in the city on Saturday urging the participating journalists to maintain accuracy, ethics and responsibility while producing news.
Speakers at the inaugural session said that journalists should present more credible and authentic information while reporting and in doing so they should consider maintaining transparency, originality and exercise neutrality.
Chief Guest Mosharraf Hossain, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Information, in his opening speech said, “There is no alternative to enriching yourself with knowledge for quality reporting. We would be able to use knowledge we gain at the workshop and for this reason we must practice more responsible and credible journalism.”
Hossain urged the participants not to engage in delivering untrue and manipulated news which confuses people.
AHM Bazlur Rahman, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bangladesh NGO Network for Radio and Communications (BNNRC) said, “You all face challenges in checking facts and verifying them. It is difficult but challenging. We started such series of workshops to overcome such challenges and strengthen media’s roles in exercising fairness, accuracy and balancing news.”
Syed Zain Al Mahmood, Country Director of Internews said, “Fact checking and verification in news reporting is directly linked to the credibility of the news media. The difference between a news report and a blog or social media post is that the news is gathered and disseminated using certain professional standards.”
“We must earn credibility which must be backed with ethical practice like checking facts and verifying information. If we publish news without verifying facts, we would lose credibility. We must practice accuracy, balancing the story and be objective in reporting,” Zain added.
Chris Stephen, a freelance journalist mostly covering war news who is also author of ‘War Crime Justice’ book, Judgment Day, The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic, conducted the workshop.
The workshop discussed topics like, Gaining audience/readership trust – ‘Better right than first,’ Principles, values of good reporting and how to achieve them, What to believe, sourcing the news, putting value on sources and fact checking: BBC ‘Reality Check’ and similar initiatives, Seeing both sides: how to get there (Northern Ireland example), The essential position of the reporter/journalist and how it works in practice and many more issues.
Organized by BNNRC with support from Internews Network, the two-day workshop is being attended by 23 journalists representing print, electronic and online news organizations based in the capital.
