During the 2017 electioneering period in Kenya, I was a field reporter in Kisumu, covering political beat for one of the major mainstream media houses in Kenya.
Kisumu being an opposition zone then, and profiled for political violence, government had invested massive resources to tame any potential election violence.
Ahead of the August 8, 2017 general election, the city faced a year long period of violent protests following the demonstrations calling for reforms at the reconstitution of the electoral body, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).
The period was marred by deaths from police brutality, destruction of property, and tension which left the area a battlefield.
The violence escalated after the election, following the rejection of the presidential election as announced by IEBC on August 11.
Pains of Fake News
The happenings in the area provided fertile ground for disinformation. As a journalist in the frontline, I was confronted with numerous claims for verification purposes.
One of the painful claims which haunt me to date is that of a prominent and respected politician seeking an elective position in the area who claimed that police had killed tens of people, put them in body bags and buried them in a mass grave at the Mamboleo Public Cemetery.
The politician also claimed that some bodies wrapped in body bags were being dumped at the shores of Lake Victoria.
One one late evening, a call from one of my editors came, claiming that the said politician had reached out to the newsdesk to highlight his claims.
Together with colleagues, we were instructed to get to the cemetery to verify the allegations before we could run with the story.
We quickly mobilised and moved to the cemetery some minutes past midnight, ransacked the entire place, and we could not locate any fresh graves.
Efforts to reach out to the politician to help with tips on the location of the grave, or links to residents whose kins were missing fell on deaf ears. He was not willing to engage past that plain allegation.
When we reported back to our editor, he suggested that we visit the nearby mortuaries to check if any bodies had been dropped there.
And the following morning, we began our mortuary visits. Apart from confirmations from the morgue attendants that no such bodies were in their facilities, they gave us access into the facilities’ storage areas, where we literally checked bodies one after another. Nearly all the bodies were identifiable, with kins aware of their whereabouts.
At one of the major facilities, the newest bodies were of a family of father, mother and child who had died from a fire accident in their home in Homa Bay County.
We abandoned the mission and retired back to our usual assignments.
However, the media became a target by the public and demonstrators who accused us of going to bed with the government by not highlighting what they termed as ‘massacre’ by the police, despite our defense that we could not verify the claims.
The persistent claims also incited the public against the police and the government, with the public directing their anger towards government installations.
Interestingly, after all the political heat had calmed down, and the politician having been sworn into his office, the claims of dead bodies in mass graves and lake shores disappeared, and he nolonger associated himself with the claims.
All these while, I considered such claims as lies.
Eye opener
However, years later, I attended trainings on disinformation, which gave me a different perspective of what I had considered as simple lies.
The training opened my eyes on how such reckless claims could be disastrous to the society, especially if they come from people held with high regards like this politician.
Later in 2021, I left the organization and joined Lake Region Bulletin. In 2022, another general election came and the usual disinformation rented the social media spaces.
This time round I was a bit more informed, and did not panic a lot when I met such claims in the social media.
Some of the photos shared of political violence, police brutality and killings in parts of the country were actually photos lifted from the internet, some dating back to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, as well as those from past violent scenes in other countries in and outside Africa.
As opposed to 2017 when I panicked and combed through my sources to verify claims, this time round I had a little more knowledge on how to use basic verification tools. And for the information I considered fake, I ignored, and moved on with life.
And fast forward to 2024, Lake Region Bulletin benefited from the African Fact-Checking Incubator programme, with support from PesaCheck, Code for Africa’s fact-checking initiative, and the African Fact-Checking Alliance(AFCA) financed by the DW Akademie.
In the program, I was the team leader for the five journalists from Lake Region Bulletin who benefited from the training and mentorship between May and November 2024.
Fact Checking Desk
The program which covered a range of fact checking skills saw Lake Region Bulletin set up a Fact Checking desk, and a segment in the organization’s website to publish fact checks.
The program included an intensive technical training for our journalists on techniques and tools used to detect and counter mis/disinformation by the Pesacheck, iLAB and CivicSignal teams.
It also had regular one-on-one mentorship with a team of international experts to improve the internal technical capacity of our newsroom staff, in addition to providing access to international digital tools and resources to help give Lake Region Bulletin a competitive edge in your fact-checking.
On top of this, Lake Region Bulletin earned membership to AFCA and access to AFCA events and trainings, as well as a modest seed grant to help cover some of the set-up/running costs for getting our Fact Check Desk going.
Experience from the program exposed me to the reality that identifying disinformation and doing nothing about it is as huge a disservice to the society as spreading the fake information itself.
It made me regret that the case of the politician, and the many other disinformation cases that I met and did nothing might have caused so much harm.
And with more sophisticated open-source verification tools I got from this program, and the renewed understanding of debunking disinformation, I learnt that I have a role in not just finding out the truth, but also sharing the same with my audiences so that they not only know the truth, but also be part of the chain to fight the disinformation.
As a journalist, I get so many calls from family, friends, followers and the general public for inquiries over a number of issues they meet in the internet spaces.
These people believe that as a journalist, I have the privilege to access facts and can help them verify certain information, especially the information which targets to exploit them economically, physically and psychologically.
Cyber criminals create disinformation which they use to fleece people, while political mercenaries create disinformation in order to control masses.
Individuals and entities also use disinformation for a range of brand benefits.
From the incubation project, I have come to believe that every newsroom requires a fact checking desk, especially now where technological advancements are overwhelming, and disinformation is attracting economic, political and social benefits to the perpetrators.
With Artificial Intelligence, people can create fake information within believable scenes and contexts, and before you know it, the world is burning.
With fact checking desks, newsrooms provide a one stop shop for the public to verify information before acting on them, and this can save the universe a great deal.
Stamping claims as FAKE and stopping there is not enough. Empowered Fact Checking desks can do much more, by doing research, publishing insightful facts and calling out those who manufacture and spread disinformation.
The internet space has provided a wider platform for people to share information, and the public deserves to be fed with facts as they depend on information to make decisions about their lives.
This fact-check was produced by Lake Region Bulletin under the African Fact-Checking Incubator programme, with support from PesaCheck, Code For Africa’s fact-checking initiative, and the African Fact-checking Alliance (AFCA).
Kevine Omollo is the Managing Editor at Lake Region Bulletin
