Expert Warns of Interlopers with False Identities Destroying Media Industry
An expert has cautioned that unless drastic measures are taken, “interlopers” with false identities will destroy the media industry through fake news and serial manipulation.
Malam Ibrahim Damisa, the Managing Director of Abuja Broadcasting Corporation, over the weekend decried how the Nigeria’s media industry was bleeding profusely due to an onslaught of untrained people using the Internet platform.
Damisa, who dialogued with some select media practitioners from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister’s Press Corps in his Abuja office, lamented that “interlopers” operating as citizen journalists had caused unquantifiable harm to the media industry.
He insisted that trained professionals must step up and save journalism from its current downward trend.
He also urged all stakeholders to participate in the industry by giving adequate attention to in-the-job training, as a measure to keep professionals abreast with global trends, as well as put them in position where they can easily dictate and avoid fake news.
He posited that fake news being traded arbitrarily by the “interlopers” with the help of social media need to be addressed, because it is capable of destroying not just the media industry, but the society.
According to the expert “The Internet has provided the convergence between the traditional and the new media. Citizens journalism is in place, and some people will just use their phones, without the sensibility of knowing if what they are dishing out to the public is right or wrong.”
