The Media Foundation for West Africa is set to hold a national-level forum on the theme: Misinformation, Peace and Democratic Consolidation in Ghana, today at the Alisa Hotel, Accra.

The forum will be organised in collaboration with the National Peace Council and Ghana’s media regulator, the National Media Commission.

This follows a nationwide training of some 130 journalists on how to spot and counter misinformation through fact checking and verification from March 13-17.

The selected participants comprised at least 40 percent females, including morning show hosts, editors, and English and local language reporters with priority given to journalists working with media organisations based in districts that share boundaries with Togo, Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire.

The workshops are part of efforts to reduce the spread of fake news especially as the country nears the 2024 general elections.

The exercise was themed: ‘Countering Mis-disinformation and propaganda narratives through fact-checking and media campaigns.’

The project was funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the United Kingdom.

Participants were encouraged to reflect on the phenomenon of misinformation and disinformation and its impact on peace, stability and democratic consolidation in Ghana.

They were exposed to concepts such as information disorder, fake news, misinformation; disinformation; their manifestations, and how they impact peace and democratic governance.

And the hands-on component of the training workshop provided participants with the requisite skills to use some fact-checking/verification tools to identify analyse content and produce fact-checked reports that counter mis-disinformation.