Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD) has launched a specialised toolkit to help journalists enhance their fact-checking skills and fight misinformation, according to a press statement.
The “Trends Monitor” toolkit will benefit digital journalists, content creators and, most importantly, fact-checkers by offering tools to conduct thorough verification of a given piece of news online.
The toolkit, which comprises a set of tools developed by MMfD, will help newsrooms monitor leading social media networks — including Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram — for organised misinformation.
It will also help journalists with content analysis in public groups on WhatsApp, which is among the most convenient messaging platforms used for spreading misinformation in the country. The toolkit will enable digital journalists to “proactively fact-check misinformation”.
“It could massively improve the fact-checking and countering misinformation operations of newsrooms,” tweeted Asad Baig, director at MMfD.
.. Grail of digital investigations for journalists. It could massively improve the fact-checking and countering misinformation operations of newsrooms.
Also happy to share that we are deploying this in Pakistani newsrooms. Kudos to my brilliant team!— asad beyg (@asadbeyg) August 7, 2023
The toolkit will allow journalists to keep abreast of the rising misinformation on online platforms and will be deployed in selected newsrooms.
“Over the period of 5 years, we’ve trained nearly 3,000 journalists in countering misinformation and fact-checking through various programs and initiatives,” the statement reads. “This Toolkit brings together our experiences and learning from our past interventions, and binds them together in the form of easily usable tools.”
