Stakeholders Urge Change in Narrative of Unverified Reportage at Rivers NUJ Webinar

The clarion call has been made by stakeholders to journalists and other players in the media ecology to coalesce efforts in changing the narrative of unverified reportage, especially leveraging available contemporary digital tools.   

This call was made at a Special One-Day Webinar titled: “AI, Fake News, and the Media: Ethical Challenges for Journalists Today” organized by the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Rivers State Council in commemoration of the 2025 World Press Freedom Day.

Stakeholders including the National President of NUJ, Alhassan Yahya, Executive Director, Public Education Works Initiative, Nimi Walson-Jack, and Founder, The Colonist Report and JournoTECH, Elfredah Kevin-Alerechi, stressed the need for circumspection among media practitioners.   

Yahya called for concerted efforts at transforming the media space with a view to ensuring that only accurate and verifiable information is peddled, stressing that “together we work towards changing the narrative of posting unverified reports.”

On his part, Walson-Jack drew the attention of participants to the legal implications of false reportage, unlawful use of digital resources and unauthorized access to intellectual property virtually and otherwise in news content generation.

Chairman of NUJ Rivers State Council, Paul Bazia commended participants for attending, noting that the webinar is part of efforts to streamline news reportage and upscale the integrity of news content by journalists, expressing his appreciation to the special guests, especially, the NUJ President, among others.

In her presentation titled “AI, Fake News, and The Media: Ethical Challenges for Journalists Today”, the keynote speaker, Mrs. Kevin-Alerechi informed that with artificial intelligence (AI) changing the landscape of media practice, it behoves media practitioners to responsibly leverage its tools for editorial, fact-checking and technical tasks.     

She encouraged journalists to embrace AI as the future of media practice, enumerating the benefits of AI utilization such as expediting editing, analyzing documents, locating information online and ensuring accuracy of news content, warning, however, that necessary attribution or credits should be accorded AI where necessary.

In his remarks, Publisher of Kristina Reports, Godswill Jumbo pointed out how advantageous digital resources such as AI can benefit journalists, advising media practitioners to ensure they deploy due diligence in their news content development and even factcheck data generated by AI, asserting that AI tools are not localized and as such may not provide accurate information.

Earlier, ace broadcaster and member of the Planning Committee for the World Press Freedom Day, Obubelebara Parker, in her welcome remarks, explained that the webinar was in response to increasing pollution of the media space with unverified news content, expressing the hope that the webinar will nudge practitioners back in the direction of professionalism and ethics.     

Participation at the webinar was a rich blend of media practitioners drawn from the print, broadcast and virtual segments of the media ecology, media managers and non-media practitioners but interested parties in the integrity of publicly available information.