This winter season students from the EJTA journalism schools will work together in cross-national teams on fact checks and blogs. A variety of European topics will be addressed: polarisation, climate change, migration, defence budgets and more. Follow us here or on our Twitter and Facebook page.
EUfactcheck, an initiative of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) fights misinformation about European policies and topics. Journalism students from all over Europe factcheck claims made by politicians and others and rate them. Our focus is not to debunk fake news or disinformation but to give correct information to the reader.
The German federal Minister of Food and Agriculture said in an interview with the German news website “Der Spiegel”, that eating less meat would be a contribution against Putin. According to our research, it turns out that this statement is mostly false. In the Spiegel interview from 18th March 2022, Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir addresses…
On Oct. 18, 2022, Germany’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, claimed on ZDF’s Morgenmagazin: “Germany doesn’t have too few caregivers measured against the population, we just use them very inefficiently.” We find this claim to be uncheckable. Germany has a shortage of care workers and it appears that the situation will become worse in the future.…
On October 23, 2022, Mirjam Herrmann, a Member of the climate activist group “Letzte Generation” threw mashed potatoes on the Claude Monet painting “Les Meules” and asserted: “We are in a climate catastrophe… I’m afraid because science tells us that we won’t be able to feed our families in 2050.“ Though her concerns are valid,…
On December 10th 2021, Boris Vujčić stated in a press conference that people should not fear higher prices after the introduction of the Euro in Croatia. He claims that in recent years wages grew more than prices in the countries that introduced the euro. Our investigation concludes that this claim is mostly true. In 2023…
The World Cup in Qatar is advertised as the first fully carbon neutral tournament. Skepticism about this claim is widespread. Can a major sporting event in a country that is strongly reliant on fossil fuels really produce zero carbon emissions? We checked this claim and found out that it is mostly false: FIFA has highly…
On November 05th, 2022, Irish left-wing party Independents 4 change (I4C) MP Mick Wallace, tweeted that the “Reality is EU now spends 3 times more than Russia” on defence. After analysing the figures Mr. Wallace refers to in his claim, it becomes clear that the claim is mostly true. Numbers from 2021During a word exchange…
Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia’s former minister of internal affairs and founder of the political party Movement of Socialists, partly blames the European Union for the escalating situation in Kosovo, which is connected to Kosovo’s decision to change the license plate policy. This claim turns out to be false. Serbian newspaper Novosti quotes Vulin’s claim, made on…
On September 7, 2022, Joachim Kuhs, Member of the European Parliament for Germany, declared on Twitter: “Herd immunity (in Germany) has already been reached: The infection control law is not necessary”. This claim turns out to be mostly false. Kuhs is part of Germany’s far-right opposition party AfD, which works against the government’s infection control…
On April 26th 2022, the British Democrats said that they want to withdraw from the UN 1951 Refugee Convention. This would make sure no more refugees would enter the UK. At least, that’s what they assert. Due to ‘the obligation of non-refoulment’, article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the need for…
On April 07th 2022, German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politician Alice Weidel claimed on Twitter that the vaccine mandate in Germany only failed because of the dissenting votes of her party. She refers to the voting of the deputies in the Bundestag earlier that day. According to Weidel, only 40 votes more…
Jarosław Kaczyński, former prime minister of Poland and current chairman of the leading government national-conservative party (PiS), caused a public outcry on social media and broke the news by stating Poland’s low birth rate is caused by women’s alcohol consumption. Kaczyński mentioned he was “joking a bit” but his statement spread like wildfire, increasing his…
The year 2022 has had a difficult start for Europe. In February Russia started a war against Ukraine. This has been challenging for Europe, and perhaps especially for Finland as it is Russia’s neighbor. As journalist students from Finland, we found ourselves wondering who are the Finnish experts talking about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the media.…
In our media analysis, we compare news about Ukrainian war refugees to the news about the refugee crisis in 2015. All news were published by Finnish public media broadcasting company Yle. We wanted to see if there is a difference in how media writes about people fleeing from Ukraine and refugees in 2015. We found…
On the 31st of March 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, called via Twitter for the old spelling of Ukrainian cities to be abandoned. At the end of his tweet, the hashtag #KyivnotKiev followed. Many media outlets, including the Dutch De Volkskrant and The Washington Post, fulfilled his request, but the Belgian media didn’t take action.…
For our factcheck we did research about the Climate Change Performance Index, an index which show how well countries perform when it comes to climate change. More specifically we took a look at how Belgium performs. To say I was shocked about Belgium’s results might be a bit exaggerated, but still there was a part…
Normally Finland hasn’t been in the headlines of global media, since Finland is mostly known for being the happiest country in the world (according to The World Happiness Report) and having one of the best education systems in the world. Now Finland and our president has been put in the spotlight. During the Ukraine war,…
Finland’s defence capability became the focus of international media attention after Russia invaded Ukraine. Finland holds a very special geopolitical position in Europe because it has 1300 kilometres border with Russia. In particular, Finland’s position regarding the defense union NATO has become a question of interest. Finland’s military service system is universal, which means that…
As several studies show, corona-lockdowns have led to increased psychological distress to all ages. International suicide hotlines, where pastoral workers take the time to listen, might help. This video is linked to the fact-check article Drastic increase in suicide attempts by children. Leave your comments, thoughts and suggestions in the box below. Take note: your…
Social media is having a huge impact on the mental health of Gen Z. Find out if it’s more likely to cause problems or solve them here!
When we started looking for claims that we could fact check, we came across a double interview with two Belgian politicians. One was party chairman Conner Rousseau (Vooruit), a left-wing politician and the other was party chairman Raoul Hedebouw (PvdA), an extreme left-wing politician. While reading the interview, we noticed the harsh words the two…
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.
By January-February 2019 a manual with guidelines and tips & tricks was published. In February 2020 a second Bootcamp will be organised in Ljubljana, with financial help from the Evens Foundation. This Train the Trainer focused on Central Eastern European countries, some new schools joined this project.
During corona the EJTA-schools continued to verify claims and publish fact checks. Now we are looking ahead to the 2024 EU elections.
For information about the EUfactcheck project please contact the programme manager: carien.touwen@hu.nl
