Improving standards and investing in public interest journalism can help raise trust in media in The Gambia
By Sang Mendy
In the face of information disorder – misinformation and disinformation and lack of access to accurate information – the public in The Gambia need media they can trust and rely on if they are to be better informed and make good decisions about their daily lives.
To earn trust, I believe – after this course – that the media must be seen to do things that make them relevant and trustworthy in the eyes of the public they serve. Media must maintain standards at all times by being more precise, accurate and professional, show no bias in their news coverage, and provide space for a diversity of voices in their coverage. The media must also be seen to dig deep, unearth the hidden truth and expose wrongdoing and the ills in society and swiftly and actively counter false information.
Media activity in The Gambia was tightly restricted by government for more than two decades from 1994 to 2017, restricting the number of media outlets and what they could report. The proliferation of media since the fall of that government in 2017 means there is greater choice but also a competition for audience and market space which I believe has affected trust.
Before 2017, The Gambia’s almost two million people had one television station, five newspapers, about 16 commercial radio stations and nine community radio stations, along with four popular online platforms, to serve them. As of 2021, the country had five television stations including the public broadcaster Gambia Radio and Television Services, about 32 commercial and 11 community radios and an ever-growing number of online platforms. The number of broadcast stations continued to grow because the new government has opened the space for media to register with little bureaucracy even though the laws on registration remain on the books.
The rapid growth in the number of media houses has, in my view, affected the quality, accuracy and professionalism of the media. A majority of new broadcast stations do not have qualified and experienced personnel to cover news and current affairs programmes. With unqualified and inexperienced people in the newsroom, quality journalism, accuracy and professionalism has been compromised.
Countering misinformation in the media
This course has shown me that, to build trust, the role of the media in curbing misinformation will be crucial. Journalists have a professional duty to expose what some call “fake news” but often do not have the knowledge and skills to spot and counter this sort of false or misleading information. Ahead of elections in December 2021, the Gambia Press Union set up FactCheck Gambia, a fact-checking organisation, run at the Media Academy for Journalism and Communication, institutions I manage. FactCheck Gambia and the academy trained over 80 journalists on how to fact-check and 10 of those subsequently participated in fact-checking of the election campaign. An investigative media organisation, Malagen, also set up a fact-checking unit.
These were the exception however, unlike in the United Kingdom which has both specialist fact-checking units such as Full Fact and FactCheckNI, and major media like the BBC and Channel 4 have dedicated units for factchecking. No traditional media in The Gambia has such a team.
It is evident that if the media do not have the skills to verify and fact-check claims, images and videos, the media may carry misleading statements and other content that can cause people make to uninformed decisions that may have dangerous effects for individuals or society, and undermine trust.
What is known about trust
Addressing our course, Carl Phillips, a researcher at pollsters IPSOS-Mori said trust was a complex concept with five main drivers from core competence and product quality, to acting responsibly and a sense of whether an organisation will take advantage of you or not. A long-running survey by IPSOS on people’s level of trust in media in developed countries suggested that trust in the media is low, but that it has barely changed over the decades, he said.
Phillip Pettit, a professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University cited by Phillips, argues that in order to understand trust in the media, it is necessary to understand three different levels or tiers of trust: basic trust, active trust and interactive trust. He argues that for there to be basic trust, the media should keep its promises to the public and must be good at what it does. For active trust, Pettit argues, the media must behave responsibly, be open and transparent about what it does and must be well led while for interactive trust, the professor suggests the media should do what it does with best of intensions, shares people’s values.
No survey of trust in the media has been carried out in The Gambia comparable to the surveys carried out worldwide by IPSOS-MORI. In 2021, a survey by the pan-African polling organisation Afrobarometer asked Gambians for their views on how governments should to false information, hate speech and political criticism (Afrobarometer, 2021). 85% of the respondents agreed that government should prohibit the spread of false news and information. 84% said they agreed that government should limit the spread of hate speech. 76% agreed that government should limit criticism against the president while 51% of the respondents disagreed that government should limit or prohibit news or opinions government disapproves of.
Even though there is no study specifically on trust in the media in The Gambia, the views reported above are reflected in a barrage of attacks made against the media day in, day out on social media. The media is often blasted by Gambians for grammatical errors, low quality content, and providing little or no investigative journalism. Sometimes, screenshots and video or audio clips of grammatical errors circulate on social media caricaturing or mimicking what comes out of the broadcast media. In my opinion, the public is losing trust in the media because of low professional standards and because the media do not often report what people need to know or do critical journalism.
The other thing I think impedes trust in the media in The Gambia is the difficulty of accessing credible and competent sources. After then President Yahya Jammeh called in 1994 on citizens to avoid talking to independent media, many Gambians, even in academia, still avoid speaking to journalists. Where there are few credible news sources to refer to when following stories or hosting a current affairs programme, the media resorts to unqualified and unreliable sources. This in turn hinders trust in the media.
What has or could be done?
There might be no sure formula to fix the issue of trust in the media. However, in my opinion, improving standards through training and creative content production and investing in public interest journalism might increase the level of trust.
The media need to work on their reputation, building and maintaining standards by paying attention to quality, (precision, accuracy and professionalism) and investing in public interest journalism. It is also paramount for the media to develop a proper corrections policy, as agreed in principle 4 of the Gambia Press Union Code of Conduct. Given the financial state of most Gambian media, it would be difficult to employ a Readers Editor similar to the position created at the UK’s Guardian, investigating and reporting on standards in the newsroom on behalf of readers1. But Gambian media could create an audience diary where audience can send in complaints about content and ensure such complaints are addressed.
There have been some changes already with the coming of public interest media such as Malagen, independent factchecking organisation such as FactCheck Gambia and journalism training schools such as the Media Academy for Journalism and Communication, which I run, and the School of Journalism and Digital Media of the University of The Gambia.
Media houses especially broadcast stations should be involved in the continued production and dissemination of public interest reporting to sustain its role in society. They should also develop the role of addressing disinformation challenges in societies by investing in factchecking and verification. These kinds of journalism brings the media closer to the people and help build and maintain trust. The media must also create avenues and time for some forms of engagement with audiences and by partnering with other actors in the media ecosystem or civil society. This could be attained by employing people skilled in interactive media. They should also monitor audience feedback, acknowledge their contributions and praise their feedback, be it positive or negative. And above all, the media should strive to increase audience reach and engagement, including those that seek to address the needs of underserved audiences and promote diversity in the newsroom and through coverage of under-reported issues and communities.
Newsrooms must strive to uphold the Gambia Press Union Code of Conduct. The GPU Code of Conduct which has 140 principles isn’t exhaustive but provides a clear guidelines on how to behave responsibly while covering general stories and specific areas such as Gender and sex, Children, Court and Crimes, Elections, Migration, Online and Broadcast Journalism and then provides an implementation plan. This should be coupled with vigorous training both in-house and through journalism training institutes. Maintaining standard and professionalism must come with capacity building therefore, training institutions should work with stakeholders in the media to revamp their curriculum to make them newsroom driven where the product become low hanging fruits ready for harvest.
References
Afrobarometer, (2021) ‘Gambians support media freedom but want government to prevent false news and hate speech’. https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/migrated/files/press-release/The%20Gambia/news_release-gambians_support_media_freedom_within_limits-afrobarometer-2may21.pdf
Habgood-Coote, Joshua. (2018) ‘The term fake news is doing great harm’. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-term-fake-news-is-doing-great-harm-100406
Phillips, Carl. (2022) ‘Trust in 2021’. IPSOS-MORI. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2022-01/ipsos-global-trustworthiness-monitor-is-trust-in-crisis.pdf
Wardle, Claire. (2019) Understanding Information Disorder. First Draft. https://firstdraftnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Information_Disorder_Digital_AW.pdf