By: Henrietta Afful
Vice President of the Ghana Journalists Association, GJA Linda Asante-Adjei says Covid-19 is not leaving anytime soon so journalists have a role to play in disseminating accurate information to combat the misinformation about Covid-19 to help prevent spread of the disease.
This will also encourage people to abide by the safety protocols which are difficult for some people to adhere to.
Speaking on the GTV’s Breakfast Show on December 2, 2021, Madam Asante-Adjei said the World Health Organisation through Global Affairs, an NGO based in Canada instituted a project dubbed ‘Mobilizing Media to Fight Covid-19’ to help combat misinformation about Covid-19. It was initiated in twelve (12) countries with focus on using journalists across the globe to communicate accurate public health measures and in combating misinformation.
In Ghana, 26 journalists were selected and trained on the UN Convention on Human Rights, how to report on Covid-19 issues ensuring that people’s rights are not trampled upon and doing fact checking through the help of two mentors before publishing stories.
She said after the training, the journalists were given a task to write 93 stories for the first part of the programme which they exceeded and moved on to the second part – the Elite stage.
Madam Asante-Adjei said some African countries had more journalists applying to be on the programme.
She said the programme is currently at the evaluation stage and this will help to identify loopholes encountered during the first phase. She was hopeful that the project will be enhanced and expanded in the second phase to bring in more journalists.
The GJA Vice President said after training, the journalists who participated in the project are now doing in-depth stories and this has enhanced their writing skills to help in their reportage especially on COVID-19 issues.
With the detection of new variants of Covid-19, the GJA Vice President urged journalists to report more accurately in order to educate the public.
She encouraged journalists to go into the hinterlands to report stories citing a story from a journalist that helped to prevent a deformed child from being killed due to an outmoded custom.
