By Philip Tnegzu/Edward Acquah, GNA
Accra, Feb. 25, GNA – A three-day training workshop for selected journalists and media practitioners in Ghana has begun in Accra.
It is to equip them with skills and knowledge in data journalism, fact-checking and financial reporting.
The training was organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft fĂĽr Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) as the final phase of a three-tier capacity-building training for journalists to expose corruption and promote accountability.
The participants, selected from the Ashanti, Greater Accra, and the five regions of northern Ghana, have gone through training on investigative journalism, anti-corruption reporting, and the use of the Right to Information Law, among others, in the first two phases of the training held in 2025.
As part of the training on financial reporting, the participants would also be taken through grant sourcing to support their investigative reporting.
Speaking at the opening of the training in Accra, Ms Rosemond Aryeetey, Senior Programme Manager for Media for Democracy and Good Governance at the MFWA, urged the participants to apply the knowledge gained to produce stories.
Investigative story production by the participants was the impetus of the training, as they were expected to, among other things, hold duty bearers accountable through investigative journalism.
Madam Rosalena Ahiable, Deputy Editor at DUBAWA, who facilitated the fact-checking session, exposed the participants to forms of information disorder and the actors within the information ecosystem who perpetuate misinformation and disinformation.
She also took the participants through digital media verification tools such as Fact check Explorer, Bing and InVid to enable them apply those tools in their fact-checking processes for investigative stories production.
She stressed the role of the mainstream media in combating misinformation and disinformation through reporting factual information to counter false information.
“Fact-checking starts with being sceptical and questioning whatever you see. Verify the information before you report it.
You should also play the watchdog and gatekeeping roles, and use your medium to educate the public”, Madam Ahiable said.
She also introduced the participants to digital research tools and techniques, such as Pinpoint, Boolean search, Web Scraping, Instant Data Scraper, Dubawa.ai, Decopy.ai and Wayback Machine, among others.
The training was under the MFWA’s “Countering corruption through accountability journalism and improved freedom of expression environment in Ghana” project.
The project sought to strengthen the media’s capacity, especially investigative journalists, to produce investigative reports on corruption-related issues, promote accountability that addresses socio-economic disparities and improve freedom of expression in Ghana.
It formed part of the Participation, Accountability, Integrity for a Resilient Democracy (PAIReD) programme, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), co-financed by the EU and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), and implemented by GIZ in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance.
GNA
Edited by George-Ramsey Benamba