Researcher, consultant. Figuring out misinformation, disinformation
False and misleading information can ruin lives. It can also have no or limited effect. How do we know what effects misinformation may have? How do we know what works as a response, and protect the right to free speech?
After more than twenty years as a journalist around the world for the AFP new agency, I have focused for a decade on trying to understand misinformation, its effects and the best ways for society to respond. In 2012, while still at AFP, I founded Africa Check, the first independent fact-checking organisation in Africa. Since 2016, I have been a member of the advisory board of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), and developed the IFCN Code of Principles, followed today by almost 100 organisations worldwide.
In 2019, I joined the University of Westminster as a Senior Visiting Researcher, and Co-Director of a course, funded by the Chevening Foundation on trust and freedom of the media in the UK and Africa.
Research & teaching - misinformation effects & responses
Since 2019. I have worked as a visiting researcher at the Communications & Media Research Institute (CAMRI) at the University of Westminster, researching four reports to be published in 2021. The series explores
the types, drivers and effects of misinformation spread in sub-Saharan Africa today,
And three approaches to reducing harmful effects
the nature and teaching of media, or misinformation, literacy
changes to the legal and regulatory framework for media and information
the spread and effects of fact-checking
In 2020, I was made Co-Director of the Chevening African Media Freedom Fellowship, funded by the Chevening Foundation and UK Foreign Office.
Teaching together with my colleague Dr. Winston Mano, our course brings together, over three years 2020-2022, three cohorts of senior African journalists and media regulators, with UK counterparts - to better understand the boundaries of trust in, and freedom of, the media.
Articles, talks, reports & papers
Since political upheavals in the UK and US in 2016, there has been a huge increase in interest in the nature and effects of misinformation, and debate about how or whether “fact-checking” works. I have written on this and related themes.
What misinformation is & policy overview
ACADEMIA
“Misinformation Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa: from Laws and Regulations to Media Literacy”. Cunliffe-Jones, P et al. (2021). University of Westminster Press.
“How government responses to misinformation in Africa restrict freedom of expression and do little to tackle the problem” Cunliffe-Jones, P. (2021) Journal of African Journalism Studies.
“Online misinformation: policy lessons from the Global South” by Anya Schiffrin and Peter Cunliffe-Jones”. Wasserman, H. & Madrid-Morales, D. (Eds). (2022). Disinformation in the Global South. Wiley (ISBN: 9781119714446).
MEDIA
“Misinformation: Making laws, without enabling media literacy”. Cunliffe-Jones, P. (2021). Premium Times (Nigeria).
“Misinformation literacy, not punitive laws, needed to combat fake news”. Cunliffe-Jones, P. Daily Maverick (South Africa)
What “fact-checking” is and how it works
For Poynter (2017) “How to fact-check a politician in 10 steps”
For Africa Check. (2019) ‘Fighting falsehood, reducing harm? Four lessons from Africa’s complex countries’.
For Project Syndicate. (2019) ‘How Fact-Checking Can Win the Fight Against Misinformation.’
For Political Quarterly. (2020). ‘From Church and Mosque to WhatsApp—Africa Check’s Holistic Approach to Countering ‘Fake News’’.
Interview with BBC World Service. (2019) ‘The spread of fact-checking in Africa’.
Making “media literacy” effective
ACADEMIA
“The State of Media Literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa 2020 and a Theory of Misinformation Literacy”. Cunliffe-Jones, P et al. (2021). University of Westminster Press.
MEDIA
For Africa Check. (2021) “Getting fact-checkers’ methods into the curriculum: the six Cs of misinformation literacy”.
For Africa Check. (2017) ‘How training schoolkids to spot dodgy health claims could help fight ‘fake news’’.
Laws & regulations of 'false information’
ACADEMIA
“Bad Law - Legal and Regulatory Responses to Misinformation in Sub-Saharan Africa 2016-2020”. Cunliffe-Jones, P, et al. (2021). University of Westminster Press.
MEDIA
For Politico_Europe. (2021) “Europe’s latest export: a bad disinformation strategy”. Cunliffe-Jones, P.
For The Conversation Africa (2021) “Punitive laws are failing to curb misinformation in Africa. Time for a rethink”. Cunliffe-Jones, P, Finlay, A & Schiffrin, A.
For Africa Check. (2021) “Governments in Africa have doubled ‘false news’ laws, to little effect. Another way is possible.” Republished in Significance - the magazine of the UK Royal Statistical Society Cunliffe-Jones, P.
The use of evidence in policy
For Poynter Institute. (2019). ‘‘Not all evidence is created equal’: project develops principles for reporting on claims about policy impact’.
Author of IFCN Code of Principles & Senior Advisor
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) was formed in 2015, hosted by the Poynter Institute in Florida, bringing together dozens of fact-checking organisations around the world, to respond to misinformation. It is the standard-setting body for non-partisan fact-checking globally. I joined the first advisory board in 2015, and helped in 2016 draw up the Code of Principles: standards of transparency and accuracy, by which fact-checking organisations could be assessed
In 2019, I was appointed the IFCN Senior Adviser and asked to review the Code of Principles.
To be effective, I believe community standards have to be transparent and agreed with, and not imposed on, a community. To ensure this happened, I conducted a six-month review of the workings of the code - consulting with dozens of stakeholders from independent assessors to the leaders of fact-checking organisations, and drew up a new, and more detailed Code of Principles introduced in April 2020.
The new Code set new standards on methodology, sourcing, transparency and principles of non-partisanship for almost 100 factcheckers from Southeast Asia to Latin America, Africa to Europe and the United States.
In September 2020, I re-joined the IFCN board as an independent member.
Articles & Resources
For Poynter Institute. (2019) ‘How to battle an octopus: Keynote remarks from this year’s Global Fact-Checking Summit’.
Tardáguila, C. for Poynter Institute. (2019) ‘The founder of Africa Check is now the International Fact-Checking Network’s senior adviser’.
Orsek, B & Cunliffe-Jones, P. for Poynter Institute. (2020) ‘IFCN strengthens its standards to build trust in global fact-checking’.
Twitter: @factchecknet
Africa Check & the Africa Facts network
In 2012, I devised and set up Africa Check, the continent’s first non-partisan fact-checking organisation. It was launched with a tiny budget of $57,000, and two part-time staff based in the Journalism Department of the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Over seven years as CEO, it grew rapidly, opening offices in Dakar, Senegal in 2015, Lagos, Nigeria in 2016 and Nairobi, Kenya, 2017. The approach I took went beyond the journalistic model of fact-checking - limited to simply publishing articles exposing misinformation - to trying to tackle the structural problems that underlie misinformation.
To do this, I grew the income from $57,000 in 2012 to $1.84 million in 2019, a team of more than 30 staff, and a new board drawn from across Africa.
Turning to countries outside those in which Africa Check operates, I convened in 2017 a first meeting of organisations seeking to set up fact-checking operations on the continent, in Johannesburg, South Africa. By the time I stepped down in 2019, more than a dozen organisations were part of a new “Africa Facts” network, seeking to promote greater honesty in public debate and online, across the continent.
About Africa Check
New York Times. (2013) ‘Nonpartisan fact-checking comes to South Africa’. Lyman, R.
The Economist (2013) ‘Getting the facts straight’. The Economist.
The Guardian. (2013) ‘Get your Africa facts right: websites seek to stem flow of misinformation’. Mark, M.
NiemanLab. (2014) ‘The non-profit Africa Check wants to build more fact-checking into the continent’s journalism’. Lichterman, J.
El Pais. (2016) ‘El agua que no es potable y otras mentiras sobre África’. Bajo Erro, C.
France Info. (2018) ‘Africa Check, le site africain qui chasse le «fake» et vérifie l'info’ Abou Ez. E.
Le Monde. (2019) ‘I’Infox : pourquoi ces « fake news » prolifèrent en Afrique ?’ Savoye, L.
BBC. More or Less. (2019) ‘The spread of fact-checking in Africa’.
About the Africa Facts network
Poynter Institute. (2019) ‘Here’s how fact-checking is developing across Africa’ Funke, D.
Books
‘My Nigeria: Five Decades of Independence’. Published 2010 - Palgrave Macmillan.
“Mr. Cunliffe -Jones has produced a sweeping yet intimate portrait of his and his distinguished family's sojourn in Africa's most populous and complicated nation – Nigeria. It is a work that deserves widespread critical attention. A triumph!” — Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People & more
“Peter Cunliffe-Jones paints a vivid portrait of Nigeria's hydra-headed travails in this passionate, intensely personal book…a vivid portrait [and the author has] a delightful knack for illustrating his points with anecdotes and stories that are at once wrenching and comic.” —The Washington Post
“Offers some challenging thinking about the nature of a country for which Cunliffe-Jones clearly feels great affection...Pleasingly he quotes Nigerians rather than foreign experts, and tackles religious tensions, oil wealth and woes, and the everyday problems of corruption...Cunliffe-Jones marshals his impressive knowledge of the country to seek out reasons for hope.” —Times Literary Supplement
“High hope and crushing disappointment runs through My Nigeria, a chronicle of Africa's most populous country from the moment of its independence from Britain in 1960 to its troubles today.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Peter Cunliffe-Jones, a veteran journalist, follows in the footsteps of his forefathers--a colonizer and an administrator--and serves up a must read for anybody looking to understand Africa's most dynamic country. In this empathetic, keenly-observed, multigenerational memoir, Cunliffe-Jones expertly lays out the challenges facing Nigeria as it approaches 50 years of independence and finds itself once again on the brink.” — Stephan Faris, author of Forecast
“An amazing book, it captures the essence of Nigeria brilliantly. It is the best work I have read on Nigeria.” —Adunola Abiola, daughter of the late M.K.O. Abiola.
“As Nigeria celebrates 50 years of independence this book aids the understanding of both the colonial legacy and the challenges facing the country. Written in a personal manner by a veteran journalist whose family have been deeply involved in Nigeria's history, this very readable account is a worthy addition to the corpus of post-colonial history books, and should be of interest to both historians and the general public.” — Dr. Maggie Canvin, Sociolingo.com
Journalism
I started out as a journalist in 1987, working for a small financial news magazine: Risk. We were not soul mates. In 1989, I published my first article in a national newspaper - an interview in The Independent with a Vietnamese friend who had been brought to the UK as a ‘boat child’, about what it meant to him to be viewed by some as a refugee and others as an economic migrant.
Europe - 1990-1997
In 1990, I joined the AFP news agency’s London office, reporting on UK political and economic news. Just over three years later, and after 18 months of night shifts, I moved to the Paris headquarters, as an editor on the Europe-Africa news desk. In March 1995, I travelled for the first time to Bosnia to report from Sarajevo, a city then still under siege. My plan was to stay for four weeks. I ended up staying, there or in the region, for two years, 1995-1997, switching home between Sarajevo, the northern town of Tuzla, and Zagreb, in Croatia, to report on the last year of the Bosnian and Croatian wars, and the first year of peace.
Nigeria - 1998-2003
I arrived in Nigeria in June 1998, a few weeks after the death of military dictator Sani Abacha, as Nigeria bureau chief. The new military regime was being pushed to leave office and allow elections. Over the next few years, living in Lagos and travelling widely, I saw the end of military rule, waves of violent civil unrest that left perhaps 20,000 dead, an uprising of militants in the Niger Delta, and an expression of hope for change. I also reported from Freetown for a month in 2000 on the final days of a conflict in Sierra Leone. I wrote about this all for AFP, the Economist and the Independent. I later wrote about Nigeria for The Guardian and BBC.
A few articles here:
The Independent (2003) ‘A weary Nigeria pins few hopes on poll marred by violence’
The Guardian (2010) ‘Violence in Nigeria: food not faith’
The Guardian (2010) ‘Make the Delta the test of Nigeria's elections’
BBC News (2010) ‘How Indonesia overtook Nigeria’
Prospect Magazine (2010) ‘Nigerian bombing - Rehabilitation not retribution’
Asia-Pacific - 2003-2006
In 2003, I moved to Hong Kong and became AFP Chief Editor for Asia-Pacific, overseeing the work of 250 journalists in 26 offices running from New Zealand, to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. While overseeing the news operation, I introduced a new focus on in-depth features and investigations. In 2004, I oversaw the agency’s coverage of the devastating 2004 Christmas Eve Asian tsunami.
Online news - 2006-2010
In 2006, I returned to Paris and London to head up the AFP’s English-language online news service, launching new formats for live coverage and catering for online clients. At the same time, I revised the stylebook for the agency’s hundreds of English-language staff around the world. In 2010 I joined AFP’s non-profit media development arm, the AFP Foundation as Deputy Director, and launched Africa Check. I left AFP in 2016, becoming a Fellow of the Shuttleworth Foundation.
Video Interviews