This spring season students from the EJTA journalism schools will once again check statements about topics in the upcoming EU elections. In their home universities and in cooperation with students from other EJTA schools they will produce fact checks, analyses and blogs. We expect to publish the first posts in early April. Follow us here or on X and on our 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 right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) ranks among the harshest critics of the countries refugee policy. In November 2021, the representative spokesman of the party, Stephan Brandner, released a statement in which he claims that not only urgently needed specialists have been let into the country. We rate this claim as mostly true.…
Harald Schwarz, Professor for energy distribution and high voltage technology at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus – Sentencer, stated in an article released on 7th May 2021 on tagesschau.de that in 2023 Germany lacks 15 to 20 gigawatt of secured power output. This claim turns out to be mostly true. In light of the…
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…
On December 14, the Russian news agency INTERFAX.RU published that the Omicron strain of Covid-19 is spreading much faster than other earlier strains that scientists have identified during the pandemic. This statement is true.
The German politician Malte Kaufmann from the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) wants to classify anti-fascist groups as terrorist networks and have them banned. He cites the rising numbers of left-wing extremist crimes in Germany as justification. The claim turns out to be mostly true. The reason for Kaufmann’s claim was an article by…
The director of the organisation Human Rights Watch Germany, Wenzel Michalski, has again criticised the upcoming World Cup in Qatar. He claims that major sporting events never lead to an improvement of human rights in the hosting country. This statement is mostly true. Frequently, major sporting events are held in countries where human rights organisations…
In year 2021 Croatia conducted a population census which happens every ten years. Mr Nenad Pokos, a Croatian demographer and professor, commented on it and said in the interview for the regional news channel N1: “The price of Slovenian register-based census in 2011 was one million euros, and the Croatian traditional census in 2021 cost…
The European Commission is hiding fatal side effects after a corona vaccination – this is what Joachim Kuhs, Member of the European Parliament for the German right-wing populist party AfD, claims. He supports his statement with respectable sources that are right in themselves. However, his interpretation of them is wrong. On October 5, 2021, AfD…
As climate change becomes ever more apparent, calls for action and consistent measures are multiplying. Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), says as part of the launch of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report (EGR21) that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, we have eight years to nearly halve greenhouse gas…
On November 16, 2021, Russia Today reported that Covid-19 vaccines bring $1000 every second to Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna companies from wealthy nations, while low-income nations remain unvaccinated. This information is mostly true.
The free movement of people is one of the four fundamental rights of the EU. Due to the newly introduced border restrictions across the continent caused by the pandemic of Covid-19, this right cannot be fulfilled as before. Terminologically, the media coverage of the situation has been framed with the use of words with negative…
The most controversial Eurogroups of recent years took place on the last 9th of April: a video conference meeting that brought together all the economic ministers of the EU countries, in which the debate was about which measures should be activated in dealing with Coronavirus pandemic’s emergency. The conference ended relatively soon, there was no…
The Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center opened in Georgia in 2011, with funds from the U.S. Government within the framework of the Cooperative Biological Engagement Program. The purpose of the center is to promote public health through detecting and tackling outbreaks of disease. Though the construction of the center was funded by the U.S.,…
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread very quickly in Italy. From February 21st, when the first case was diagnosed in Codogno (Lodi, Lombardy), more than 143.000 people have suffered from the virus and more than 18.000 have died throughout the country. Scientists calculated the infectiousness rate through the so called R0 factor- which indicates the number…
An outbreak of COVID-2019 pneumonia caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus was recorded in Wuhan, China, at the end of December 2019. On March 11, the World Health Organization(WHO) declared a coronavirus pandemic in the world. According to Worldometerdata, on April 1, more than 889,213 people were infected worldwide, 188,352 patients were cured, and 44,322 people…
Analysing Vox’s position on gender violence has required us to frame the rise of right-wing movements in Europe, select claims from their leaders in media outlets and use relevant sources –reports by the Spanish General Council of the Judiciary and experts– to debunk their discourses.
During the elections or when important topical issues show up, a lot of factchecks will pop up. Factchecking is a concept that is particularly prevalent in politics. Partly due to Trump and his fake news, factchecking and politics go hand in hand. The checks are often not popular with all politicians, because they make sure that…
Five years ago the European Union adopted a Directive on reducing the consumption of light plastic bags, according to which it is necessary to cut down their consumption from 200 to 90 pieces per person per year by 2019, and down to 40 pieces by 2025. The most rational option is to stop the production…
While analyzing political statements in Croatian media, we discovered that the data we came across tend to be correct but incomplete. Incomplete in a sense that they’re not represented within context. Politicians like to focus on the positive side of their work, unfortunately that’s often at the expense of providing a full picture. Manipulating with…
The UK withdrawal from the European Union implies that after the expiration of the transitional period the EU laws will no longer be applicable to England. Trading with the countries outside the framework of the free trade agreement will be regulated by the World Trade Organization if these countries are its members. Although many agreements…
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
