AFCN Organises Psychosocial Safety Clinics for Fact-Checkers
20 August 2022
The Arab Fact-Checkers Network (AFCN) led by ARIJ organized 21 psychosocial safety clinics, during August 2022, for fact-checkers from 7 Arab countries: Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Tunisia, Morocco and Yemen.
Psychosocial safety clinics were conducted by Dr. Khaled Nasser, a family communication consultant specialising in trauma and has been working closely with journalists for the last 7 years. On top of that, he provides remote trauma sessions for journalists covering wars and tensions in the Middle East to support their mental health through ARIJ e-learning course on Edraak Courses platform and the Online Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.
These clinics were preceded by a Psycho-Social Safety Workshop for fact-checkers in early June 2022, which was also conducted by Dr. Khaled Nasser, and it was an introduction to the one-to-one clinics.
The participants in the clinics emphasised its importance through their understanding of how to deal with various psychological pressures during work, in addition to learning important skills to avoid social problems.
Latifa Jaffal, a Tunisian fact-checker from “Tunisiachecknews” platform, says about these clinics: “recognizing the real causes of anxiety and stress helps better planning to address and overcome them.”
On his side, Raafat Sultan, an fact-checker from Yemen with “FactYamen” platform, stressed the importance of “continuing to provide psychosocial safety clinics for workers in the field of fact-checking”.
The “Dalil” project is part of AFCN led by ARIJ, with the support of the European Union and in cooperation with SIREN and JOSA. The project aims to increase the usage of locally driven, fact-checked online news in seven countries in the MENA region (Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen).
