Digital Rights experts have called on media practitioners across
Africa to focus media attention on digital rights violations on the continent,
reports ITREALMS.
They made this call while speaking at the induction ceremony for
the 2018 Digital Rights and Inclusion Fellows in Lagos at the headquarters of
Paradigm Initiative.
The Communications Officer, Paradigm Initiative, Sodiq Alabi, noted
that undoubtedly, there has been an increase in media coverage of digital
rights, both in the legacy media and in the new media.
“But there is still room for significant improvement in terms of
quality of content and the depth of the reporting. It would be great if major
media houses can assign journalists exclusively to digital rights and inclusion
issues so that we could have an improvement both in quantity of reports and the
quality,” he said.
In his address, the Executive Director, Paradigm Initiative, ‘Gbenga
Sesan reiterated the need for media houses to focus more attention on the
issues affecting digital rights, stressing that these include the absence of
data privacy laws, persecution of bloggers and online journalists, mass
surveillance, internet shutdown and the new taxes on over-the-top services like
social media.
Paradigm Initiative is a social enterprise dedicated to
deepening digital rights and inclusion in Africa. The group created the media
fellowship to strengthen the capacity of African journalists interested in
covering digital rights and inclusion.
ITREALMS recalls that the
pioneer fellows are Victor Ekwealor, a Nigerian and the editor of TechPoint,
and Emmanuel Agbenonwossi, the Togolese editor of AfroTribune.
Nenye Dom/GEE
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