In May 2024 the EUfactcheck programme successfully factchecked the EU elections for the second time. From academic year 2024-205 onwards the EUfactcheck programme will offer two different ‘tracks’ for EJTA member schools to participate.
* Individual schools can still use the EUfactcheck website as a platform to publish their students’ factchecks. This can be done at any convenient moment throughout the year, that fits the curriculum of the study programme. Please contact the EUfactcheck editorial team.
* Each year another EJTA member school will organise an intensive factchecking week, the EUfactcheck Lab, funded by Erasmus short mobility. Other EJTA member schools are welcome to join with up to 6 students and one teacher (Erasmus Blended Intensive Programme). Please contact the EUfactcheck programme manager for more details. In 2024 the EUfactcheck Lab covered the EU elections, in 2025 the topic is ‘Climate Reporting’.
EUfactcheck, an initiative of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) fights mis- and disinformation about European policies and topics. Journalism students from all over Europe factcheck claims and statements made by politicians and others and rate them. Our focus is not to debunk fake news but to give correct information to the reader.
On October 23, 2023, the State Secretary for Gender Equality, Equal Opportunities, and Diversity of Belgium, Marie-Colline Leroy, posted a message on X about the striking women in Iceland. In the tweet, she claims the following: “In Iceland, women are striking today, along with non-binary individuals and even the prime minister @katrinjak, because in the…
On November 9, 2023, journalist Heleen Ekker, from RTL Nieuws, wrote about the warmest twelve months in history (Last Twelve Months Warmer Than Ever Recorded, 2023). She based her statement on research from Climate Central. She said that the past twelve months were the warmest period ever recorded, with temperatures 1.3 degrees Celsius higher than…
On March 8th, 2024, the Politico.eu website published an article entitled: “If far right surges in EU election, women’s rights could be imperiled”. The first part of the article from politico.eu presents theoretical analysis of how the upcoming elections for the European Parliament can affect women’s rights, especially in light of the growth of far-…
On April 24, 2024, journalist Yuriy Kobzar wrote an article for the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN about the increasing support within the European Parliament for fully confiscating Russian assets, citing a Deutsche Welle (DW) report. This claim is accurate. The article details a growing movement among European Parliament members advocating for the confiscation and reallocation…
In an article entitled “WHO reports significant increase in cholera cases”, published on 24 September 2023 by Tagesschau, a significant increase in cholera cases is reported. This claim turns out to be true. Twice as many cholera cases as in 2021 The article highlights the increase in cholera cases from 2021 and 2022 and states…
In a Facebook post from March 21st, 2023, German AFD politician Jonas Dünzel claimed that 680,000 migrants are waiting in Libya to continue their journey to Europe, specifically Germany. This statement is mostly false as there are 680,000 migrants currently on route through Libya, however, Germany is currently not listed as a destination. The claim…
On April 18th of this year, Bart de Wever, the leader of the political opposition party the New-Flemish Alliance claimed on Twitter that ‘banning nuclear energy is the stupidest thing a country can do’. The tweet lacks context but contains accurate numbers. It appears this claim is mostly true. Bart De Wever tweeted a screenshot…
On August 29, 2023, the online newspaper “Welt” published an article with the headline “Game cancellations in amateur football – DFB names shocking figures”. The article claims that in the past 2022/23 season, 961 games in amateur football were canceled due to violence and discrimination. The claim is considered: mostly true. For better understanding, the…
The impact of climate change on animals and nature is a recurring research topic. But according to the news website n-tv also the habitats of migratory birds are threatened by climate change. This claim turns out to be true. Climate change is affecting most coastal areas and their inhabitants, such as migratory birds that stop…
An article in the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) by Bjørn Lomborg from 2013 claims that the EU is spending trillions of euros to reduce global warming by just 0.05 degrees Celsius. According to current research, the costs could be significantly higher. The effect of the measures on global warming remains unclear. Scientific forecasts come…
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…
We decided to turn to the media about the versions of what happened on August 20, 2020 with the Russian politician Alexei Navalny. We analyzed articles from reliable sources in Germany and Russia and identified the most common positions in the case of the possible poisoning of Alexei Navalny by Novichok. We found contrasting views.…
On 12 November 2020 the Russian news agency TASS reported that he Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russian Federation, represented by Sergey Lavrov, the Head of the Ministry, had imposed sanctions against Germany and France because of the case of Alexey Navalny. In this blog we explain how we factchecked this claim to be mostly…
Coronavirus pandemic has been followed by a mass infodemic with several interest groups standing behind it. One of the directions of the infodemic includes false treatments, fake recommendations, and unverified protection methods. In Georgia, even doctors often become the source of such fake information, hazardous to human health. Fake news titled “Everything Will End Fatally:…
With the premiere of the documentary “Francesco” which happened at the Rome Film Festival in October 2020, controversial opinions arose in various media about two certain points in the film. Pope’s statements “homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They are children of God. Nobody should be thrown out or be made…
On October 14, 2020, Fox News posted an article with the headline: “Trump and public health system have saved 2 million lives in coronavirus pandemic.” However, this statement raised our doubts and suspicions. Newt Gingrich, the author, did not provide any statistics: there are no illustrations or links. Firstly, we decided to check the statistics:…
After the US elections, a prominent Croatian RTL TV news anchor Zoran Šprajc, made a comment in one of the most watched news shows in Croatia called RTL Direkt, assuming that the biopharmaceutical company Pfizer waited on purpose for the end of the elections to publish news about the vaccine against Covid-19. However, Pfizer explained…
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
