Commissioner for Information in Anambra State, Mr Paul Nwosu has advised journalists to step up their game of information gathering and dissemination, to beat social media users.
Nwosu said this when he hosted journalists from the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Anambra State Council in his office on Wednesday.
He said the advent of social media seems to be overshadowing regular journalism practice but insisted that the owners of the job are journalists, and the only way to source credible news was to read articles by trained journalists.
He said: “Social media has not mitigated what you do in the mainstream media. The social media people call themselves journalists but we know those who are the real journalists.
“You people are the real journalists. You are trained, you have ethics that guide your practice. There are doctrines and ethics that you abide by. Social media throws all that away, and they are not the journalists that we have always known.
“Even as much as we think that social media rules the space today, people who are thirsty for the truth still go back to our good old newspaper. Nothing compares to holding the newspaper in your hand and reading it, that is the only way people can read and be sure that what they are reading is credible.
“They know that only journalists will make phone calls, confirm and reconfirm to be sure that what they are about to publish is truth, but social media does not. No one sanctions them, so they do what they like.”
Nwosu said that most people just read social media to titillate their minds and entice themselves, but never believe them because they are deceptive.
He said it was the coming of social media that brought the terminology ‘fake news, adding that before now, news was always credible, and it is either news or it is not news at all.
The commissioner who also applauded the chapel for the plan to hold a workshop on the forthcoming general election said it will also be good to inculcate training of journalists to help them upgrade their practice.
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