February 28, 2023: We started our year by holding back-to-back training sessions, titled ‘Beyond Fact Checking: Countering the Spread of Political Disinformation’, at prominent newsrooms across Pakistan.
The training is designed for newsrooms and seeks to equip journalists with the relevant skills to counter political misinformation effectively and timely.
MMfD Founder Asad Baig, the lead trainer, along with his team held training sessions at Dawn News, The Independent Urdu, Hum News, Express News, Geo News Fact Check, The Current, Naya Daur through the months of January and February 2023.
In the last few years, MMfD has taken substantial steps to assist journalists across the country to deal with the information disorder — especially in countering organised disinformation — through a series of hands-on learning initiatives, including but not limited to capacity interventions, residential bootcamps, and fellowship programs.
With the elections approaching, a substantial increase in the political misinformation has been observed, and in response, we are also ramping up our efforts. In that spirit, in addition to our legacy learning initiates, we’ve developed a specific module for Pakistani newsrooms to
a) Assist them in sourcing credible information through platforms, and
b) Share with them the tools and techniques developed by MMfD to go beyond the traditional fact-checking and investigate organised disinformation.