The Ghana Fact-Checking Coalition (GFC) has opened the Tamale Media Situation Room (MSR) ahead of the 2024 general elections.
The coalition will be monitoring selected radio and television stations and social media to fact-check claims with potential to mislead the public before, during and after the elections.
The Tamale MSR is made up of an editor, four fact-checkers, a data analyst, two graphic designers, a social media analyst, an administrator and three Tamale-based journalists who will help bring context to claims that may be in any of the northern languages.
The formal launch of the situation room was done on December 5, 2024 with representatives from the National Media Commission (NMC), the Regional Peace Council, Regional Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) delivering solidarity messages.
The MSR will be opened to local and international election observers, including representatives of the Commonwealth, the National Peace Council, ECOWAS, the European Union, the US Embassy, media monitors from the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP).
About the GFC
The coalition is a collective of top fact-checking organisations that have collapsed their respective newsrooms to leverage their resources to work on information integrity before, during and after the 2024 general elections.
The coalition was first announced in a press release on November 7, and had been preceded by months of behind-the-scenes deliberations between the major partners – Fact-Check Ghana (a project of Media Foundation for West Africa), Dubawa Ghana (a project of the Centre for Journalism, Innovation and Development) and GhanaFact (a project of FactSpace West Africa).
Aside from Tamale, the coalition also operated a media situation room in Accra at the premises of the MFWA.
