Do you want to help fight misinformation and online hate speech?
Code for Africa (CfA) has immediate vacancies for two Fact-checkers, with research experience and excellent writing skills to join our PesaCheck team remotely.
PesaCheck is incubated by Code for Africa and works to check and verify claims by public figures published on both mainstream and social media. The initiative is supported by the innovateAFRICA fund, the International Budget Partnership and Code for Africa affiliates in Kenya, Tanzania & Uganda.
Required
- Proven experience in journalism, especially digital journalism, with research experience
- Excellent numeracy and analytical skills, and the ability to break down complex issues and explain them in a way that any audience can understand
- Excellent written and verbal skills, with English as your primary work language alongside the required language in the respective country in which you will be based – French or Amharic
- The ability to handle large volumes of work within a limited time period and deliver consistent results within deadlines
- Independent research skills
- An eye for accuracy and truth, a nose for news
- Initiative and going above and beyond to deliver results
- Top-notch news literacy, and a well-honed nonsense detector
- An understanding of fact-checking, disinformation and misinformation, and digital tools for fact-checking
- Critical thinking skills
Preferred
- Experience working in online newsrooms
- 2+ years of work experience
- Experience in or familiarity with digital collaboration tools, including Slack, Google Drive, and Trello
- Familiarity with digital verification techniques and tools
- Familiarity with mining and handling large datasets
- Strong decision-making skills
- Amazing presentation skills
- Ability to manage time and meet deadlines
Language and Location Requirements
We are looking for candidates based in the following countries and fluent in the following languages:
- Burundi and Mali (French and English)
- Ethiopia (Amharic and English, with a working knowledge of Oromiffa and Tigrinya)
About the Role
The successful candidates will join PesaCheck’s fact-checking team. The team is responsible for checking and verifying statements and content from various sources to help the public separate fact from fiction using a range of journalism and digital tools.
You will work closely with the editorial team and occasionally collaborate with other team members in each of the countries where PesaCheck operates in order to verify claims from a variety of sources. The content produced will be published on pesacheck.org, and will also be syndicated with various media partners.
You will also be working to hold public figures accountable and ensure that the media is accurate in its reporting and coverage of issues of public interest. This will require a familiarity with social media as a source of news, as well as a familiarity with news and media consumption patterns in your country.
You should have solid news judgement and deep knowledge of the media landscape in your country of specialisation.
You will report to the Deputy Editor and will work with other fact-checkers, and other members of the PesaCheck team
Responsibilities
- Identify important disinformation/misinformation claims in the public domain that can and should be fact-checked
- Undertake research to verify or debunk claims identified, and write explainer articles, in an easily understandable way, on how you arrived at your findings
- Support the PesaCheck team in checking and verifying claims identified from various sources
- Spearhead verification and fact-checking within the Code for Africa network
- Research the latest trends and industry standards around verification and fact-checking to ensure that the fact-checking team is ahead of the curve, and use this information to assist the managing editor to review and document best practices for the benefit of the fact-checking team
What We Offer
- A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth both in terms of career path and public stature
- A dynamic workplace, with the opportunity for regular remote work, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits
- An innovative and interesting project portfolio, that regularly helps push the envelope globally by pioneering new techniques and technologies and that demonstrates real-world applications with grassroots impact for digital tools
How to apply:
Please fill in this form: http://bit.ly/3782bbc by 28 March 2020.
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest federation of independent civic technology and data journalism laboratories, which build digital democracy solutions giving citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions, and that strengthen civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
This includes building infrastructures like openAFRICA and sourceAFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative and the sensors.AFRICA network.
The African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) is a CfA managed association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional mainstream media to smaller specialist units. ANCIR member newsrooms investigate crooked politicians, organised crime and big business. The iLAB is ANCIR’s in-house digital forensic unit, with teams in east, south and west Africa. ANCIR uses its resources to strengthen newsrooms’ own internal capacity, by providing access to the world’s best whistleblower encryption and investigative semantic analysis technologies, as well as skills development, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.
At CfA, we don’t just accept differences – we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. CfA is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
To all recruitment agencies: CfA does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, CfA employees or any other company location. CfA is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.