BBC journalist in Nigeria shares how she navigates election disinformation
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It may feel sometimes that American elections are the only elections influenced by political polarization and disinformation.
BBC Senior Journalist Fauziyya Tukur says otherwise.
Reporting on disinformation and politics from Nigeria, Tukur says recent elections there were rife with false information that is dividing communities where she lives.
As part of our Talking Sense series, which aims to help Minnesotans have hard political conversations better, MPR News reporter Catharine Richert sat down with Tukur to find out what covering political polarization and disinformation is like in Africa.
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Her responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Talking Sense is a partnership between MPR News and Braver Angels, a nonprofit that has been working to bridge political divides since 2016.
What similarities do you see between the U.S. and the communities that you cover in Africa in terms of how disinformation affects elections?
Tukur: I always say that disinformation is universal, especially when it comes to election disinformation. It’s the same the world over. What differs are the wedge issues.
In Nigeria, our wedge issues are religion; they are ethnicity; they are tribe; they are political affiliation.
And when it comes to polarization, it’s almost the same thing. But with polarization, you know, political affiliation is key. We see that all over the world.
But with the United States, it’s really pronounced because of the way Democrats completely differ from the Republicans. For countries like Nigeria, and in many African countries, it’s not as pronounced as the United States.
You and your colleagues at the BBC have developed a specific way of reporting on disinformation. What’s the process?
Tukur: What’s really important is taking our audience through how we know something is false. We use a lot of open source investigation tools, whistleblowers.
It’s not just about telling audiences, ‘Oh, we know this is false, or we know this is true.’ You have to take them through the processes, tell them how you were able to unravel the secret or unravel the misinformation.
How do you find your audience responding to that? Do they write to you to say, ‘Oh, now I understand what’s going on,’ or ‘I’ve shifted how I see this issue?’
Tukur: A lot of people make references to our investigations. We’ve been able to do that a lot, even though we have challenges of mistrust of international media in this part of the world.
Again, going back to how we show our audiences how we know something is not true, has gone a long way in making them really aware. We’ve also been able to do a lot of media literacy, especially with regards to the big election last year.
We had this piece where we used all the major languages in Nigeria telling our audiences, ‘This is what you should look out for, this is what you should be aware of.’
How much did disinformation affect Nigeria’s recent elections?
Tukur: There was a massive spread of false information on social media, and it was a huge task for us. We saw speculations, the use of false images, manipulated audio. It was massive.
Even after the elections, we saw a lot of paid political influencers. And I mean, it hasn’t stopped. It has continued, but people are becoming more and more aware that these things are happening.
In the United States, being a journalist is relatively safe. What is it like for journalists covering these hot button issues in places like Nigeria?
Tukur: It’s really hard, and I'll give you an example. Recently there was this brouhaha about the recently elected Nigerian president’s (university) certificate. This disinformation campaign was started about how his certificate was fake and that he probably fudged it. He attended a school in the United States back in the ‘70s.
One of his opponents took the matter to court. And the school was deposed in the U.S. by a court and documents were provided to show that the President did, in fact, attend the school, finished from the school and was issued a certificate.
But conspiracy theories were started about him buying the certificate and my team investigated that story. We read the deposition from beginning to end. We contacted schools, and we saw the original certificates provided by the school to the court. We saw the documents and we wrote an article about this and the Internet came for us for days.
We were trolled. Our photos were everywhere. We were called liars. We were called paid journalists. We were called names. And we were scared for our safety because people were calling for us to be attacked and trolled.
How do you wake up every day and continue to do it. What keeps you motivated?
Tukur: Just knowing that what I do is really important, and knowing the impact that my work has not just in Nigeria, but all over the world.
The investigation that we did into paid political influencers has gone really, really far. It’s one investigation that I’m really proud of. And just knowing that it’s helping people — it’s satisfying but also very important.