Unicef, Madhya Pradesh and Data Leads organised Factshala training on how to avoid spread of misinformation on social media.
DataLeads trainer Ghazala Yasmin took the media participants from Bhopal, Indore and Gwalior on the training concepts and stressed the need of evidence and not sharing any unverified messages. She shared that factshala is a news and information literacy programme launched by Internews in collaboration with Dataleads with support from Google.org and the Google news initiative. It aims to help people to assess and critically evaluate information.
Dr Santosh Shukla, State Immunization Officer spoke on the importance of evidence based reporting, particularly for immunization and how spread of right information can help to support immunization. Vandana Bhatia, Health Specialist, UNICEF also reiterated the same and also asked participants to keep writing and talking about COVID19 appropriate behaviours.
Anil Gulati, communication specialist, UNICEF, Madhya Pradesh, facilitated the meet, and shared that this practical training will help in supporting efforts of the state on COVID19 and this will be followed by two more rounds of meeting after media with spiritual leaders and spokesperson in December itself. Media representatives from newspapers, radio, online sites were present at the online meet.
