In light of the war in Ukraine the students from the EJTA journalism schools will focus more on background publications and less on factchecks, this seventh season of EUfactcheck. It is very difficult to fact-check war claims when primary sources are hard to find or impossible to reach. Our ‘Uncheckable claims’ show just how complicated it is to unravel the truth. So we will instead show you the context of fact-checking: in our blogs, interviews and media analyses.
The invasion of Ukraine has made it impossible for EJTA and EUfactcheck to further continue our cooperation with Russian journalism schools.
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…
On April 27, 2022, Brussels Times published the article “Major Belgian cities in precarious water situation” where it claimed that most of Wallonia and some of Flanders are depleting their renewable water resources at the highest rate in northern Europe. However, it seems that the author misinterpreted data from Aqueduct making the claim mostly false.…
In a recent talk about women in leading positions Ekin Deligöz, the German undersecretary of the Ministry for Families, Elderly, Women and Youth stated that mixed teams work more resiliently, faster, and more sustainable in times of crisis. This statement proved to be mostly true. “Diversity is not only a self-purpose: mixed teams work more…
Belgian Member of Parliament Hans Verreyt [of the nationalistic Vlaams Belang party] was quoted saying, “The inactivity rate among non-EU foreigners is 44.2 percent and among women it is even 59.3 percent,” in his party’s official article. These figures are correct. However, Verreyt carries on: “Anyone who continues to argue that migration is necessary to…
This fact check examines the origin and authenticity of the statement “Russia abandons International Space Station: It could fall on Europe!“, made on April 3rd in an article published by the Spanish daily sport newspaper Marca. The article says that Russia has ended its cooperation with Western countries regarding the International Space Station and allows…
On the 4th of May 2022 Rasmus Andresen, a member of the European Parliament, posted a Tweet in which he claims that more than 30 million Europeans live in energy poverty. This claim turns out to be mostly false. What is energy poverty? According to Marine Cornelis, an expert in energy policy and consumer rights,…
On January 26, 2022, FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino said at the European Council in Strasbourg that only three workers died in construction of football stadiums for World Cup 2022 in Qatar. He said: “When I hear today that 6,500 people died in the building of football stadiums in Qatar, it is simply not true. Because…
Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February, which led to worldwide protests. One of the many protests took place in Berlin, organized by the German non-governmental organization Campact. It organized multiple protests following the invasion, but the one on the 27th of February struck out because of the high number of participants. According to…
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…
Introduction and context In a recent factcheck article, our colleagues from the Media University Stuttgart checked the claim of Mr. Nikola Milina, the head of Croatian police, who said that the violent pushbacks at the Croatian-Bosnian border published in October 2021 were an “individual event” and that he didn’t want such incident to “affect the…
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.
