Just as journalists have to fact check before they publish, politicians – and anyone else who makes a statement – have to check their theories and sources to claim something. It’s of fundamental importance that people check their claims, assuming a misinterpretation of your entire statement can destroy it and it will not benefit your…
No less than 59 billion euros were awarded to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2019. That is approximately 36% of the total EU budget. European policy provides for enough food to be harvested in a sustainable way. In addition, consumers should be able to buy agricultural products at a reasonable price and farmers should…
On the 13th of March, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an article concerning banning the pesticide mancozeb. In the article Jeroen Voorbraak, director of UPL Breda, states that mancozeb is a relatively harmless substance and that it has not been shown to cause Parkinson’s disease or to have hormone-disrupting properties. His claim turns out to…
The coronavirus made big changes to lives all across the world. Travel plans and events have been cancelled, exams have to be made at home and we haven’t visited friends and family for weeks now. We discovered that the coronavirus also caused some problems in the factchecking process. 1 Contacting companies The first difficulty we…
The Belgian and Austrian railway companies NMBS and ÖBB claim that the new night train between Brussels and Vienna is 10 times more environmentally friendly than airplanes. This claim was published in many Belgian media as ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’, ‘Knack’ and ‘Dewereldmorgen’. The claim turns out to be uncheckable. Both NMBS and ÖBB were unable…
In times of Corona, making the right decisions is not easy. Different experts come up with quotes and points of view about this pandemic. However, some of them are dangerously hard below the belt. I am mainly talking about the statement “After the plague, Corona is now entering Europe through Italy”. Not only is this…
Bob Van Hee, professor emeritus in medical history of the University of Antwerp made a statement in an interview on the website of Flemish public broadcaster VRT that made some people frown: ‘History seems to be repeating itself: in the Middle Ages, the Plague also entered Europe via Italy, just as COVID-19’. The claim turns…
During this lockdown we started “media monitoring” of sports websites. This implies that we’ve been scanning different sports websites during Corona times to find out how they approach news reporting right now and if we could find any similarities or differences between them. During this period we decided to focus on three different sports websites,…
On the 13th of January, Kathleen Van Brempt stated in the Belgian broadsheet De Standaard that Australian cars emit on average 45% more CO2 than their European counterparts. Van Brempt is a Member of European parliament for the Flemish socialist party sp.a. Her claim is true. In the European Parliament, Kathleen Van Brempt is responsible…
Geert Bourgeois, a representative of Flemish nationalist party N-VA in the European Parliament, claims in Flemish newspaper De Standaard (25.01.2020, paywall) that for every billion euros of exports, we create 14.000 new jobs in Europe. This statement comes in response to the trade agreement concluded with Vietnam in 2019. These figures turn out to be…