Dubawa has emerged winner of the highest impact fact-check at the Global Fact 10 awards held in Seoul, South Korea on Friday.
Announcing the winners on June 30, 2023 at the closing ceremony of the annual gathering of the global fact-checking community, Enock Nyariki, the Community and Impact Manager at the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), said this year’s recipients of the Global Fact awards topped the list of organisations whose best fact-checks from the past year were nominated for each of the three categories of the awards, namely: Most Creative Format; Highest Impact Fact Check; and Most Innovative Collaboration.
WATCH: Moment @dubawaNG, a member of #NGFactCheckers, was announced as winner of the global fact-check of the year with the Highest Impact at the closing session of the #GlobalFact10 in #Seoul, South Korea.@dubawaGH‘s @carolineanipah receives the award on behalf of @kemi_busari… pic.twitter.com/eILeLDmSJf
— FactCheckHub (@thefactcheckhub) June 30, 2023
The fact-check authored by Kemi Busari, the Nigerian editor of Dubawa, won the highest impact category. Other notable organisations shortlisted alongside Dubawa include the AFP Fact-Checking (France/USA), Myth Detector (Georgia), and Taiwan Factcheck Center (Taiwan).
Busari’s report focused on Nigeria’s fake ‘doctor’ cashing out on a deadly concoction that cures nothing.
Also, Cek Fakta-Liputan 6 (Indonesia) won the Most Creative Fact-check format for their published comic book “lawan hoaks” or fighting hoax. The comic book contains verification of 21 pieces of misinformation, plus infographics and fun facts, to reach young people.
Similarly, the Most Innovative Collaboration award was won by the six-member group of Estadao Verifica, Agencia Lupa, Aos Fatos, Projeto Comprova, Universo Online (and Meedan).
Their collaboration produced ‘Confirma 2022‘ to collect 347,000 anonymous questions and distributed 150,000 fact-checks with six (6) WhatsApp tip lines.
Their innovation drove misinformation response efforts of the Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (a non-partisan electoral authority).
Speaking on the award, Busari expressed joy at the global recognition, saying he endured severe challenges in the course of the investigation.
“The investigation itself took about five months, if I even want to add the research part, is far more than that. There were a lot of challenges, we needed to source funds to do the investigation, and secondly, it was hard to get respondents who will be willing to talk about the effect of taking the herbal product.
“Apart from that, it is really a very wide field. I had to read up a lot of scientific articles, terms, and documents so I could understand and clearly interpret the outcome from the laboratory to the public,” he noted.
He added: “We received the best award a few weeks ago when we saw that NAFDAC immediately swung into action to ensure this product is off the market and we also see their continued effort to make sure that they sanitize the space.
“When some of these little things we do in our small closet get international recognition, it brings a lot of joy and happiness to someone like me and the entire team who worked on the story.”
He urged budding fact-checkers to go beyond the basics in their reportage, saying fact-checkers should hold the government accountable anywhere in the world regularly.
Dubawa is a member of the Nigerian Fact-checkers Coalition, a 12-member organisation that focuses on curbing misinformation and disinformation in Nigeria.
EDITOR’S NOTE
* Kemi Busari’s comment was added to this report.
