The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the media as a vital partner in advancing regional integration under Vision 2050.
Speaking at the opening of a two-day Regional Training on Information Integrity for Journalists in Accra, Mr. Mohammed Lawan Gana, ECOWAS Resident Representative to Ghana, stressed the importance of empowering the media to play its role effectively.
The training, organised by the ECOWAS Commission in partnership with the GIZ Organisational Development Programme and the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), is aimed at addressing the growing challenge of misinformation, disinformation, and false narratives across Member States.
It seeks to provide journalists with the skills and knowledge needed to uphold information integrity, practice responsible journalism, and ethically counter misleading content and anti-democratic narratives.
He praised the media for its vital contribution to peace and democracy across the continent, noting that the workshop on information integrity for journalists in ECOWAS member states was key to boosting the visibility of the organisation’s regional integration efforts under Vision 2050.
These efforts, he said, aim to promote peace and security, deepen economic integration, strengthen democratic governance, encourage social inclusion, and support sustainable environmental practices.
He explained that the training was part of a broader ECOWAS initiative, anchored in a memorandum of understanding signed with MFWA in December 2023, with backing from the GIZ OD Programme.
Highlighting today’s fast-evolving information landscape dominated by social media, he warned that truth is constantly under attack from misinformation, disinformation, and deliberate distortions. Journalists, he added, carry the heavy responsibility of protecting public trust and ensuring citizens have access to factual, accurate, and balanced information. Without information integrity, he cautioned, democracy weakens, public confidence declines, and social cohesion comes under threat.
Mr. Daniel Max Boehme, Head of Cooperation at the German Embassy in Accra, also stressed the media’s power to shape public discourse, amplify citizen voices, and hold leaders accountable. However, he warned that misinformation and disinformation spread hate speech, undermine peace, erode trust, and divide communities.
He underscored the importance of training journalists to defend the truth, safeguard open debate, and support ECOWAS’s 2050 vision, reaffirming Germany’s commitment to working with ECOWAS and the media to build peaceful and inclusive societies.
He urged journalists to apply the lessons of the workshop in their newsrooms and ensure that truth prevails over lies.
Dr. Kojo Impraim, Director of Media for Peace and Social Cohesion at MFWA, observed that while digital technology had expanded access to information in West Africa, it had also fueled risks such as unchecked harmful content and falsehoods. He pointed out that some journalists themselves had contributed to the problem by generating manipulative content and spreading it at great speed. Well-trained journalists, however, could counter these challenges, empower citizens, and strengthen dialogue around information integrity and other forms of information disorder.
Source: myghanadaily
