By Sumaila Ogbaje, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
It used to be enough for a journalist to be the first person at a scene, the one who got the quote, the one who filed before the deadline. But in Nigeria today, the battle for credibility has moved far beyond the newsroom. It now begins and often ends on WhatsApp, X, TikTok, and a thousand other digital spaces where rumors outrun reporters and outrage travels faster than fact-checking. That was the sobering message at a recent seminar organized by the Premium Times Academy and conflict scholars, where media veterans and researchers gathered to ask a hard question: what does responsible journalism look like when everyone is a publisher? The answer, repeated by speakers like Dayo Aiyetan of the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, Premium Times editors Musikilu Mojeed, Idris Akinbajo, and Dapo Olorunyomi, and academics including Prof. Isaac Olawale Albert, Oluwaseyi Ayeni, Joan Hassan, and Silas Jonathan, was that journalists can no longer afford to act as gatekeepers who simply decide what gets published. They must become gate-checkers, people who carefully inspect every piece of information before letting it pass through. For the average reporter translating this into daily work, it means a simple but demanding shift: speed without verification is no longer just a professional flaw. It is a danger that can destroy a newsroom’s reputation, trigger lawsuits, and, in a country this sensitive, deepen the very conflicts journalists are supposed to illuminate.
One of the most striking warnings concerned the way ethnicity sneaks into crime reporting. The facilitators gave a simple comparison that stopped the room: “Fulani man arrested for kidnapping” versus “Man arrested for kidnapping.” In both headlines, the crime is identical and the arrest is identical. Only one thing changed: the ethnic label. Yet that single word can change how millions of readers interpret the event, shaping suspicion of an entire community and feeding cycles of retaliation. The presentation explained that profiling occurs when a personal characteristic, such as ethnicity or religion, is used as a shortcut for judging an individual. It becomes especially dangerous in Nigeria, where ethnicity is tangled with politics, land ownership, elections, farmer-herder clashes, and control of resources. A careless phrase can light a fire that reaches far beyond the original story. But the facilitators were careful not to say ethnicity should never be mentioned. It can be legitimate when it is directly relevant, necessary for identification, and supported by evidence. The problem begins when repeated references turn one individual into a symbol of an entire group. Before publication, journalists were encouraged to ask five uncomfortable questions: Is the ethnic identity relevant to what happened? What evidence supports including it? Could the inclusion be read as collective blame? Does it deserve to be in the headline at all? And perhaps the most revealing test: would the story be written the same way if the suspect belonged to another ethnic group? The principle, repeated often, was simple and humane: report the person, not the stereotype, and let evidence take precedence over identity.
Another major challenge came from the growing habit of treating social media as a primary reporting tool. Oluwaseyi Ayeni reminded journalists that while important breaking stories now often appear on social media first, user-generated content is not automatically free for the taking. A public post is not public property; a screenshot is not a verified source. This is a mistake many reporters make in the heat of a developing story, and it can come with serious consequences. Ayeni outlined three major risks: copyright, privacy, and defamation. Taking a photograph or video without permission violates the creator’s rights, and simply crediting the author does not necessarily solve the legal problem. Privacy is equally important when reporting on minors, victims, protesters, or grieving families. Then there is defamation: if a journalist repeats an unverified accusation of fraud, rape, corruption, or other wrongdoing from an unknown social media post, the news organization can face legal action even if the original author disappears. To help reporters navigate these dangers, the seminar offered a practical checklist with the memorable acronym ACCEPT. Journalists should verify who actually created the material; establish the context in which it was shared; obtain consent where necessary; consider the ethical implications; establish that the material has not been manipulated, recycled, or generated by artificial intelligence; and ensure the information can be defended with evidence. They were also advised to verify social media accounts by checking official websites and established channels, and to contact the person involved directly by phone or email when possible. Screenshots, links, and embed codes should be preserved and submitted with every story, not only for legal protection but as part of a culture of careful, transparent reporting.
Artificial intelligence is making this work even harder. Silas Jonathan, who led the session on fact-checking and digital verification, showed how AI has lowered the barrier for creating convincing fake photographs, cloned voices, and manipulated videos. The examples were alarming: a fake Joe Biden robocall during the 2024 New Hampshire primary, fabricated audio involving a Slovak political figure during the 2023 election, and synthetic images showing former U.S. President Donald Trump with Black voters. But Jonathan also warned against relying too heavily on AI detection tools, because these programs offer probabilities, not proof. They can also falsely label genuine material as fake, which undermines trust in real evidence. Instead of trusting a single tool, he urged journalists to ask deeper questions: Is this material authentic? Who created it? When and where did it originate? What narrative is it trying to promote? Visual clues like distorted hands, garbled text, inconsistent shadows, and duplicated objects can help, but they are becoming less reliable as generative technologies improve. The more durable approach, Jonathan said, is to establish provenance and corroborate information independently. Before publishing, journalists should determine whether something is new or recycled, find the earliest uploader, and verify the location using landmarks, signboards, language, and vehicle number plates. They should also look at the story the content is telling and seek independent evidence outside the original post. The recommended workflow was simple enough to remember: pause, save and archive the material, trace its earliest version, corroborate the time and place independently, and only then decide whether to publish, hold, or debunk it. He also recommended free tools like Google Reverse Image Search, Google Lens, InVID, and FotoForensics, practical resources that any reporter can use on a phone or laptop.
Beyond the digital challenges, the seminar reminded everyone that journalism is never neutral in times of crisis. Figures from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development on crises in Jos showed that fear-inducing narratives generated around 53,800 interactions, compared with 11,600 for conspiracy claims. Emotional content simply travels faster and farther than factual information. Idris Akinbajo, Premium Times Managing Editor, and Prof. Isaac Albert, a Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, urged journalists to widen their understanding of conflict. Too often, reporters focus only on the final, violent stages, while ignoring the latent and emerging stages where early warning and preventive reporting are possible. Albert defined conflict simply as a difference of opinion or diverging interests, involving different thought processes, realities, and needs. It is not inherently destructive; it becomes dangerous only when handled adversarially. Journalists were encouraged to distinguish between different forms of conflict, including stakeholder, geographic, causative, intensity, and time dimensions, and to understand the difference between insurgency and terrorism when analyzing security situations. Conflict-sensitive journalism, they said, is built on four principles: seek truth, minimize harm, maintain independence, and remain accountable. Practically, that means understanding the conflict before reporting it, assessing how coverage might affect it, explaining the reasons behind actions, and presenting conflict as a process rather than a single event. Journalists should avoid framing every dispute as a simple two-sided battle and instead recognize the complexity and internal differences within groups. This requires asking harder questions: What is the conflict truly about? What are the underlying causes? Who is fueling it? Who is working to prevent violence? The reporting process, from story idea to final draft, should be deliberate: background research, developing a hypothesis, mapping sources, preparing a pitch, conducting field reporting, comparing findings with initial research, and writing strictly from evidence. In humanitarian reporting, Musikilu Mojeed added, reliable data can save lives, expose gaps, and test official claims, but only if journalists interrogate the numbers instead of reproducing them blindly. Who produced these figures? What definitions were used? What methodology was applied? What interests could influence the data? Are there competing figures? Sources like NEMA, the National Bureau of Statistics, UNOCHA, UNHCR, IOM, and ACLED were recommended as starting points.
The most chilling lessons came from history, as Dapo Olorunyomi, Publisher of Premium Times, walked the room through the power of narratives to shape political and communal violence. He drew a careful distinction between a report, which tells what happened; a story, which explains what happened to someone and why it matters; and a narrative, which shapes the broader meaning attached to events over time. In Rwanda, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines used dehumanizing language against Tutsis and broadcast messages that contributed to the environment surrounding the 1994 genocide. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda later convicted media figures, including Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza and Hassan Ngeze, editor of the Kangura newspaper, for incitement and related crimes. In Kenya, the 2007 post-election violence killed more than 1,000 people and displaced many more, with radio broadcasts examined for their role in inflammatory political communication. In Sierra Leone, politically aligned radio stations reflected and deepened the country’s political polarisation during periods of conflict and elections. These examples are not distant abstractions; they are warnings about the recurring risks of dehumanisation, amplification of political rhetoric without verification, the vulnerability of influential broadcast platforms, and weak regulation. Joan Hassan, another facilitator, described fake news and hate speech as mutually reinforcing threats to social cohesion, capable of deepening polarisation and destroying public trust. Journalists in Nigeria are not without guidance: the Code of Ethics of the Nigerian Press Council, the Nigeria Broadcasting Code, and relevant provisions of the Cybercrimes Act 2024 provide standards and legal obligations. But in the end, the lesson of the seminar was both ancient and urgent. Digital journalism demands speed and discipline in equal measure. Being first brings brief rewards; being right builds lasting credibility. In a country where words can heal or wound, the golden rule for Nigerian journalists remains simple: be fast, but verify first.