Noah Dameh is the program director at Radio Ada, a community radio station in the small town of Ada on the Ghanaian coast.
For the last 20 years he has been one of the station's permanent staff members. "I do everything here, I even scrub the floor," he said, laughing. If a presenter of a morning show cancels, Dameh steps in. If a technical problem crops up, Dameh knows how to fix it.
Last year he reorganized the way the newsroom was working. "We used to see a story in the daily paper and simply take it over. We thought that if it came from a big publishing house, it had to be right," he said. But after taking part in a workshop run by DW Akademie and a partner organization, Penplusbytes, Damah said he realized he'd "been living with fake news but just didn't recognize it."
He decided to change things and shared new insights with his eight newsroom colleagues. It included how to verify a news story, the concept behind metadata on photos, and the possible motives people have for creating reports. "We now always check the story against multiple sources and take a closer look," he said. In his radio shows, he also tries to give listeners additional media literacy skills by addressing fake news.
He said sharing his knowledge comes naturally to him. "Radio Ada is like a family. We eat fufu together, we play soccer together, and we all need to learn from each other – including how to deal with media," he said.
By Sarah Platz and Benewaa Fosu