THE IMPACT OF FAKE NEWS DURING LOCKDOWN

One of the negative impacts of total lockdown which was imposed in Khartoum state is the increase on the spread of rumors among people. Some social media activists try to spine some news from their own minds without depending on sources.
There are numbers of example of rumors and fake news have been widely circulated on media outlets, but they turned out to be false. The reason of such circulations is rarity of sources no press conferences, no events and even no direct contact between government officials and media representatives due to curfew and difficulty of movement. That is why some journalists break all barriers and ethics of Journalism and tarnish images of organizations and individuals.
As media trainer I always tell my audiences and trainees that credibility and professionalism are most powerful weapons that journalists should have.
Some media published a story about Sudanese government tends to sell out one of his key Port to one of Arab country, which turned lately to be not true. As a journalist, you need to write your opinions in free manners in any of the daily issues. But when writing such news, you need to be more accurate and desiccate to the facts otherwise, you will become the story itself. In this way, your credibility would be questionable.
Another example was the story that was circulated last week regarding the U.S staff been attacked in Khartoum. There were a lot of rumors and unconfirmed information about the incident. Some reported, that an American Embassy staff was drunk and knocked down cars along Khartoum streets. Others said it was a traffic accidents and collided with a number of cars on the side of the road. None of these information was verified from the U.A embassy in Khartoum. Personally, I think rumors is more destructive than weapons
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in1948 granted people freedom of expression and opinion in article 19 under to charters of flow of information. I think in Sudan of post-revolution there is a need for charters of honor to organize media and press to avoid daily apologies in official media as transitional government used to do.
It is very clear that fake news became roots cause of many tribal conflicts, in Sudan and South Sudan including many African countries as people will depend on one source and work on it and that is why we see media is holding great and sensitive responsibility. Here I call all government officials, decisions makers and social and political organizations to create regular Platform to deal with the press in full transparency to avoid crisis of communication gap.