To promote accountability and democracy, Daily Trust, in partnership with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), has launched a dedicated fact-checking website and newsletter (trustcheck.dailytrust.com).
Trustcheck is a news verification and fact-check project of Daily Trust newspapers committed to fostering accountability and tackling the scourge of fake news and misinformation.
A weekly 15 minutes programme on our sister station, Trust TV, is also enlightening our viewers and helping them to spot and fight fake news every Friday.
By dedicating a separate website to the project, the newspaper is reaffirming its commitment to fighting fake news on a grand scale and ensuring that truth prevails in public discourse.
Through a fact-checking team that comprises reporters, editors, and social media specialists, this new portal can jointly tackle this menace and help our audience make informed decisions.
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The platform will aggregate all fact-check reports on one portal to make for easy reading and reference.
Also for launch, today is the Daily Trust fact-check newsletter, an aggregation of fact-check reports in the week. The newsletter will be available to our email audience every Thursday of the week.
Readers can subscribe to it via trustcheck.dailytrust.com.
“Although it is a separate website, the Trust Check will be hosted on the Daily Trust mother website for easy access by our larger audience segment and its content will be promoted across our social media platforms.
“The project has immense benefits: it will increase our impact in the civic media space and help us amplify the reach of our fact-check stories which are sometimes lost in a web of other unrelated stories on the main website,” says Naziru Mikail Abubakar, Group Executive Director, Digital and Editorial.
“We are excited to work with Daily Trust on this project,” Idayat Hassan, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), also said.
“The initiative is desperately needed in Nigeria. Fake news is a threat to democracy. Election campaigns are in top gear and as politicians dish out false information of all kinds to their supporters, we hope this platform can perfectly fit in as the watchdog and help the truth go viral,” she said.
“Aside from helping our readers to spot fake news easily, without having to search the mother website, the new website will help us build a unique audience and supporters to fight fake news.
“With the new platform, our partner also can now easily present a unique link to cite and connect to its platforms,” she further stated.
The Hausa language version of the site will soon be launched.