Centre equips journalists with professional, digital reporting

The International Press Centre (IPC) has organized a two-day capacity building workshop for political correspondents ahead of the 2019 general elections.

The workshop which took place in Abuja, drew participants from the NorthWest and North Central states of the country with the sole aim of equipping political reporters with necessary skills needed for objective reporting in the forthcoming elections.

Speaking at the workshop, Dr Ruqayyah Aliyu, Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University, Kano, described politics as conflict of interest.

According to her, most crises or conflicts resulting from political processes often start before elections.

“We cannot separate politics from conflicts as Politics itself, is best described as conflict of interest.

“It’s either about someone struggling to remain in power or someone trying to takeover one’s political seat.

“The process is usually characterized by series of crisis in our society which we must rise to put an end to or reduce to the barest Minimum through the media”

Ruqayyah charge reporters to adopt professional ethics while reporting, avoid being partisan, fake news, avoid propagating hate speech, and publish only news worthy of publication not just for his or her immediate locality, but the nation and world at large.

To address the menace of political conflicts, she opined that, political reporters must be responsive in engaging in intensive voter education by sensitising the member of the public particularly on the consequences of election violence.

Furthermore, participants at the workshop were also trained on how to use modern social apps in the cause of their reportage to meet up with the modern ways of filing in their reports.

Founder, Journalism Clinic, Mr Taiwo Obe, said that, to be current, reporters need to use social media apps as added advantages rather than seeing such apps as threats to their profession.

He added that, although, the social media is full of fake and unverifiable news items, there are various means of verifying and confirming such news by contacting verifiable persons or authenticated accounts before rebroadcasting such news.