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 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…
On November 9, 2021, Flemish newspaper “De Morgen” published an article titled “Belgium loses more terrain on climate index: 49th place between Belarus and Slovenia.” Does Belgium really perform that bad in the Climate Change Performance Index compared to other European countries? Yes, it does. What is the CCPI? The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI)…
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…
On January 15 2022, the chairman of the far-left party PVDA Raoul Hedebouw joined Conner Rousseau, chairman of left-wing party Vooruit, in an interview with De Morgen to discuss the possibility of releasing the Covid-vaccine patents. During this interview Hedebouw claimed that “of all European countries, Belgium blocks the waiver to release Covid-vaccine patents for…
To be honest, this last fact-checking has not been the most difficult that we have done. The claim that we chose seemed easy from the very first moment as it was not about any complex topic. Actually, both of us had doubts about whether if it was a good claim with enough base to dig…
On November 26th, Pedro Sánchez, Spanish prime minister, spoke at “Mujeres Parlamentarias” forum, where he claimed that “Spain has nowadays the most equal chamber of deputies in terms of gender of the European Union, with a total of 166 women in it”. However, Spain does not have the most equal chamber of deputies of the…
When you work as a journalist you usually deal with a lot of different topics. If you aren’t one of those specialized reporters who cover specific events of a specific subject, then you are one of those who can talk about everything but nothing at the same time. A friend of ours who studies “International…
On 22nd of September 2021, the member of the Austrian National Council Dr. Dagmar Belakowitsch made a statement during a speech in front of the national council where she talked about the side effects of the Covid-19 vaccination and said: “I mean those who have strokes after the vaccinations. This is a very common side…