In March 2021 students from 18 EJTA-schools start fact checking with fresh energy and new inspiration. With renewed formats and more cross-national collaboration projects we hope to surprise you and keep our critical public alert on pan-European topics.
On March 25th, 2021, Laura Sachslehner, a member of the Viennese city parliament (ÖVP, Austria’s Peoples Party), Laura Sachslehner, posted a video excerpt of her speech claiming that “attacks on police officers are an everyday occurence in Vienna“. The politician does not cite any source to support her statement. Her claim is uncheckable. Laura Sachslehner’s…
On 24th of November 2020, the German aid organization of the Protestant Church Brot für die Welt made a statement about domestic violence against women. In a press release they stated according to the United Nations (UN) women’s organization UN Women the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in domestic violence against women…
In a Dutch news article of late February, Russia expert Helga Salemon claims that the Sputnik V corona vaccine is available in just 5 of the 85 regions of Russia. Also, she claims that the vaccine is better available for the so-called elite than for other people. These claims appear to be not completely true.…
At the beginning of January, VOX, a Spanish far-right party, issued a statement in which they blamed the current government’s immigration policies for making Spain’s coasts “the principal entrance for illegal immigration in Europe”. The release is chronologically connected to the massive arrival of irregular migrants to the Canary Islands, where the regional authorities were…
In the first national election debate, broadcasted by RTL4, leaders of political parties in the Netherlands were asked to take a stance on several important issues. One of the statements, about climate change was: “In order to achieve the climate goals the Netherlands must build new nuclear power plants”. Conservative parties such as the VVD (liberal party), the PVV (nationalist party)…
In a press release on February 24th, 2021, the right wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) stated that around 20 percent of illegal migrants who are picked up by the border police in the Austrian state Burgenland “are bringing the coronavirus along to Austria.“ The statement is mostly false. The FPÖ-statement refers to unnamed police sources…
On February the 24th the Irish minister of Education Norma Foley of the party Fianna Fáil made a statement about antigen testing at schools. “The World Health Organization does not recommend antigen testing in schools.” Her claim is mostly false. The Education minister stated in a radio interview with RTÉ radio 1 that the WHO…
On July 3rd, 2020, the Moscow City Duma held a meeting during which Deputy Yevgeny Stupin presented a draft of federal law on the abolition of pension reform. A video of his speech (in Russian) was posted on the YouTube channel “Совесть Некрасовки” (Сonscience of Nerkasovka). In his report, Mr. Stupin proposed to increase pension…
On 7 December 2020, Slovenian Minister of Economic Development and Technology Zdravko Počivalšek made a statement about the second lockdown in Slovenia. In television programme Studio City he said that generally speaking Slovenia has had one of the longest “lockdowns” in Europe. He also stated Slovenia had a thorough system that, in his opinion, did…
On 28 February the Dutch minister of finance and leader of the Christian democrat party CDA, Wopke Hoekstra, participated in an election debate broadcast by RTL. During this debate, he stated that the costs of Dutch healthcare exceed 100 billion euros. In a response on Twitter, member of Parliament Fleur Agema, number 2 on the…
The pandemic makes the home a (more) dangerous place for many women. We took a closer look at whether the restrictions on social contact and curfews affected the extent of recorded attacks in the form of domestic violence. Violence against women is not an isolated phenomenon. The WHO identifies it as one of the greatest…
On November 26th 2019, Jorge Buxadé, Spanish delegate for the far-right political party VOX at the European Parliament, made a speech in which he affirmed that the current government’s immigration policies are to blame for making Spain’s coasts “the principal entrance for illegal immigration in Europe”. In our fact-check we analysed these assertions to prove…
Rain or Shine. Copyright Noah Moeys, 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic is a health crisis that many predicted but the world was never really prepared for. Life as we know it isn’t there anymore. The times of struggle create the favorable environment for the production of bullshit, which in the era of the internet share faster than anything. As an American philosopher Harry…
We have dealt with demeaning responses and complete ignorance. But our fact check journey was a valuable learning experience. And a fun one. Seeking the truth will never get old and it often provides for some great stories. Here is ours. Our world is flooded with information – good and bad, true and false. We…
Croatian media landscape was recently hit by seemingly “great” news about a Croatian amateur film director Mario Šulina winning the prestigious award – Venice Golden Lion. He was awarded for his feature film “Adam” telling the story of a Croatian War Vetaran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the news media did not directly say…
The “online” lecture was supposed to start in 5 minutes, when I accidentally checked news and heard that 4800 cases were reported in the country. I was surprised to enter the lecture while a friend sent me a message on the phone: ‘’Do we have fun somewhere today? I imagined where we could have gone,…
Which tweet to choose? How can we get enough information to be sure of our prediction? And how to simplify complex information? What have we learned? Which tweet to choose? Environment and ecology are very hot topics nowadays. We can see a lot of new research about pollution, global warming and food waste, but because…
In this blog post you will find a reflection on the fact-checking process of four students from the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences. It was a really interesting and new experience to go through and we would surely recommend everyone who is just in the least bit interested in journalism, to go through…
The word “negru”, which literally means black in Romanian, was carelessly uttered by football referee Sebastian Coltescu and caused a big scandal as the players left the football field on the fourteenth minute of the PSG-Istanbul match. As it turned out later, the accursed word was uttered not by Coltescu himself, but by his assistant…
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.
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.
After the success of the students’ publications, the participants of EJTA’s fact-checking project EUFACTCHECK decided at the EJTA AGM in Paris (July 2019) to move on with the project and to take new steps in the academic year 2019-2020.
At the EJTA Teachers’ Conference in Dortmund (October 2019) practical details were discussed and a new publication schedule was created for autumn 2019.
By January-February 2019 a manual with guidelines and tips & tricks will be published and on 13-14 February 2020 a second Bootcamp will be organised in Ljubljana, with financial help from the Evens Foundation. This Train the Trainer will be focussing on Central Eastern European countries, but also on new participants that want to publish on the platform.
All the information about this event: nadia.vissers@ap.be
“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.
