Plateau Media Practitioners Train on Conflict Reporting.

Elizabeth Salami.

A three day training on “Media for Peace” has ended in Jos with media professionals tasked on peace building, solution oriented and development Journalism in their reportage.

The training which was organized by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), in conjunction with the Plateau Peace Building Agency, brought together media professionals from across the print, electronic and digital platforms, and held at the Crispan Hotel and Suites, Jos from Monday 4th – Wednesday 6th May.

The training which recognized the critical role the media plays in peace building and national development had training sessions in “Communication for development and Peace Building,” Introduction to Information Disorder Ecosystem,”, ‘AI and Facts Checking Tools,’ ‘Understanding Disinformation and Hate Narrative-how they manipulate minds, language and images,” Conflict sensitive and Peace Journalism.

It also had practical sessions where participants were shared into groups and asked to write reports to change the current negative narratives about Plateau State, rewrite sensational conflict news, reducing its risks to escalate tensions and using fact checking tools to check images and videos to ascertain if they are false, AI generated so that Journalists don’t help spread falsehood which can escalate conflicts.

The facilitators, Lady Irene David -Arinze, Lois Ei-kojonwa Ugbede among others, all established that conflicts emerge from multiple sources with different dimensions. They maintained that journalists reporting on conflicts should understand the underlying and immediate causes of the crisis and give accurate report after fact checking. Such reports they said should be non inflammatory but pointing towards solutions.

Commenting after the training, several participants sued for more of such training, which they said will improve their news reporting and promised to pass the same to other colleagues.