GJA cautions media houses against declaring final election results

The Vice President of the Ghana Journalists Association, Linda Asante Agyei, has urged media houses to refrain from declaring final results in the 2024 elections, emphasising that it is the sole responsibility of the Electoral Commission (EC).

She made these comments during the launch of an SDG facility project by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development in partnership with the Danish Embassy, aimed at strengthening climate reporting and defending media freedom.

Linda Asante Agyei stressed the importance of responsible reporting, citing the potential for conflicts arising from inaccurate information.

She highlighted the collaboration between media houses and the EC, underscoring that journalists should only present provisional results until the EC certifies the final results.

“Our role becomes very, very, very, very key to ensure that we report and report responsibly, we come out with the right information, and we are doing this in collaboration with the Electoral Commission. You know, they also take us through some training to ensure that we report and report adequately.”

“Remember, for us as media houses, we are not the final institutions to even announce election results, it’s supposed to be the EC, and we have to do that in collaboration with them. So once EC declares before we can also declare, we need to know the extension between providing or presenting the provisional results and then the final results. Ours is just to present the provisional results until EC certifies the results before we can, you know, also announce.”

As part of the SDG project, Rev. Mawuli Tsikata, a member of the Citi FM project implementing team, discussed measures to ensure accurate reporting, including the use of AI tools to identify fake news and training journalists to combat disinformation.

“So, our project is mainly a digital project. It’s to help with digital reporting. What we’ve seen is that there are a lot of challenges with journalism these days when it comes to reporting news on online platforms, that has to do with fake news, disinformation, misinformation.”

“So, what we’re doing is to build platforms that can help journalists report accurate news and to be able to determine what fake news is and what the right news is. So, we’re using AI tools that we’ve built to be able to identify some of these fake news on digital platforms.”

“Also, we’re trying to provide a network of journalists and train them on how to fight fake news, so we’ll be organising webinars, we’ll be organising training.”

Source: Citi Newsroom