In recent years, public media in Spain have been questioned because they are commonly accused of serving particular political tendencies. In the case of the Catalan public broadcasting, the claim arrived to the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament in January 2019. Two complainants accused the Catalan public television (TV3) and radio station (Catalunya…
According to an article posted by the Dutch newsblog ‘De Dagelijkse Standaard’ on the 1st of February 2019, The Netherlands is the country in Europe that welcomes muslims the most. The claim turns out to be mostly false. The information comes from a report by Pew Research Center that posted the results of their research…
On June 24, 2018, speaking on France Culture, the toxicologist André Cicolella claimed that “80% of the total load of endocrine disruptors comes from food.” While plausible, this figure has yet to be substantiated.
According to a November report of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, the number of suicides in Greece increased by forty per cent between 2010 and 2015, as a result of the economic crisis. This is mostly true.
On the 3rd of February 2019, several newspapers including Metro reported that more weed farms with Dutch characteristics were being discovered in countries across Europe. The articles were written due to the report from the investigative journalism programme Reporter Radio on Dutch radio station NPO Radio 1. The claim seems to be mostly true. In…
On January 23, during an Italian talk show, Luigi Di Maio (deputy prime minister and minister of Labour and Social Policies) declared that, according to a report by Istituto Cattaneo, the cabinet led by Giuseppe Conte is the most popular in Europe. Actually, this is not precise. The report Lo strano caso del consenso al…
The Dutch newspaper Trouw published an article on February 1st about import tariffs of 100 percent on Serbian products like milk. According to Trouw, this is problematic, since the imposed tariffs are – according to the EU – a direct violation of the regional Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA). Our findings suggest this is…
In an article posted the 27th of November 2018 the Belgian newspaper De Tijd claimed that the health damages by road traffic related air pollution costs the European Union around 62 billion euros a year. This claim turned out to be mostly true. “From a study done by European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) it turns…
The Natracare brand of organic skin protection claims on its website that conventional menstrual pads are made of “90% plastic”. An unverifiable figure, but likely. “Did you know conventional menstrual pads are made up of 90% plastic materials?!” The brand Natracare, a pioneer in organic sanitary pads, uses this astounding figure to appeal to…
During elections, some candidates buy advertisements on Facebook to increase the visibility of their posts. Some see this as necessary to gain the upper hand in an election. In an election period, do wealthy candidates have an advantage thanks to Facebook? “The way Facebook works is simple: the more money you spend, the wider your…
The signing of the Global Compact for Migration was greeted with many comments. Damien Rieu, an activist with the Génération Identitaire movement, “estimates” that France already spends 4.5 billion euros on immigration. He’s basing his figures on Nadine Morano statement.
Swedish nationalist party the Swedish Democrats tweeted via their EU account on January 4th 2019, claiming that “5000 people have received asylum in Sweden due to newly introduced law on upper secondary education”. This is mostly true.
In a tweet, Deputy Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Salvini claimed on December 16, 2018: “Repatriates (of migrants into Italy): + 28% since I’m in the government. I am sorry that the opposition and some misinformed journalist even falsify the numbers and the reality.” His claim turns out to be mostly false.
When the Netherlands announced a national ban on ivory trade on December 17th 2018, Dutch D66 European Parliament member Gerben Jan Gerbrandy shared an article from the D66’s website. In this article, Gerbrandy is quoted saying: Almost 50.000 elephants are being poached a year.” But reliable data shows this number is way too high.
Analysing the speech of Cristian Escribano and Sergio Santamaría at the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament was not easy, so we divided the task in different stages. First of all, we decided to split the group, in order to make things easier. The first part of the group took care of the context…
Take a look behind the scenes of our article on the place of nutrition in exposure to endocrine disruptors. From the choice of the subject to the publication of the article, through the meetings with the experts, we tell you the main stages of our reflection in drawings.
We, as journalism students, love the fact that we can fact-check news and claims. A good article or news item stands or falls by its fact-check. But if you want to do a good check, it is quite difficult to get involved with the right people and the right reports. Certainly for a journalism student.…
The news came unexpected in mid-January. The 83-year-old entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi, four times Prime minister of Italy, will run for a seat in the European parliament at the general elections due to be held on May 26th. It’s the last coup de theatre from a man who his adversaries have considered many times as politically…
It is generally believed that «fake» is the product of new technologies but it can also be traced that the waves of «fake news» come with populism. The US elections vividly demonstrate this phenomenon. In one of «The Guardian»`s recent articles «How rising populism could shake up European elections» it is stated that future elections…
On 31/1/2019 an article published on more than 25 websites (some of those referred to another website as a source) stated that the European Parliament conducted a National Public Opinion that “records interesting trends of the electorate, considering the elections taking place in May”. In the articles is stated that the European Parliament conducted a…
The first report for the EU Fact Check focused on a widely disseminated news item, was extensively disseminated in news websites, referring in a report published by the European Parliament regarding the voting intentions of the Greek citizens. he European Parliament report was misinterpreted without taking account of the report’s findings and the use of…
As Belgians, the past few weeks we have experienced weekly youth demonstrations for a better climate policy. Since the youth demonstrations of May ’68, which changed the political landscape at that time, we haven’t had such relentless passion for change. There is no doubt that climate change is one of the hottest topics right now.
For such a big project as our EUfactcheck, we have to get every lecturer ready. To do so we organised a bootcamp on 24-25 January. Lecturers from twenty different Journalism schools visited the Institute of Media at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Hello! I’m Pauline. I’m a plastic particle living in a sanitary pad. I hear a lot of things said about me, so I decided to find out more for myself by meeting and questioning actors in the world of plastic that could enlighten me about my life and my fate. I’ve been wondering about four…
“The way Facebook works is simple: the more money you spend, the wider your audience. For 10 euros, the post reaches 30,000 people, and for 100 euros, it reaches 300,000. The candidate with the deepest pockets has all the odds in their favor.” José Bové, Green MEP, December 14, Libération Our students tried in many…
From December 11 to 20, our group focused on the issue of immigration. Among the topics we identified, the subject of “the cost of immigration” appeared fairly clearly. Particularly due to the significant number of comments found on social networks, especially Twitter. 1) Our Selection We identified a video released by Damien Rieu on December…
The new European-wide campaign Y Vote is working hard to encourage young people to make informed choices at the upcoming European Parliament elections.
Dutch locals from the city of Utrecht assembled to express their support to Jewish Utrecht residents at the Nova shopping centre in the district Kanaleneiland on 13 January. With kippahs on their heads, the protest participants spoke out about intolerance, anti-Semitism and remembered the social democratic values which Europe has at its core.
EUFACTCHECK is the fact-checking project of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) that intends to build a sustainable curriculum unit on fact checking within a European network of Journalism schools.
We will publish fact checks and blog posts to test our common methodology during the European elections.
The project gathers fact checks from more than 150 students and staff from more than 20 EJTA schools.
Through fact checking European political claims and trying to tackle misinformation, we want our students and our public to grow a deeper insight and interest in democratic processes, both on national and European level.
EUFACTCHECK wishes to motivate fact-based debate in the EU and to stimulate media and information literacy.
“What is this politician saying??” Did you read or hear a politician or public figure make a questionable claim? Send us an email with the claim and maybe we will fact-check it.
Please include the source (url and date) where you found the claim.
