By Uzair Adam Imam
A communication expert, Aisar Fagge, said the quest to keep up with breaking news has led to a high degree of error in online media reporting today.
Fagge, a lecturer at the Department of Mass Communication, Kano State Polytechnic, said the failure was due to the less or absence of proofreading and confirmation of facts by the editors.
He said this on Sunday when speaking on the “Fake News on Nigerian Cyber Space: The Role of an Ideal Journalist” at a One-Day Workshop for Early-Career Journalists on Reporting Northern Nigeria, Fake News and Journalism Ethics.
At the event organised by the management team of The Daily Reality Newspaper that took place in Bayero University, Kano, Fagge said the absence of or weak gate-keepers contributed to the lack of quality journalism in Nigerian cyberspace.
He also attributed the high degree of error in today’s online news reporting to poor staffing, which leads to the single-handed operation of the media.
He said, “Almost everyone wants to establish an online newspaper. A single person wants to be a publisher, a reporter and an editor all by himself. No doubt, the standard of journalism falls.”
The event had in attendance many communication experts and journalists from within and outside Kano state, including some that joined the workshop via Zoom from overseas.
