This winter season students from the EJTA journalism schools will work together in cross-national teams on fact checks and blogs. A variety of European topics will be addressed: polarisation, climate change, migration, defence budgets and more. Follow us here or on our Twitter and 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.
“Only four per cent of Dutch nature reserves are in good condition. The number of wild animals has halved since 1990,” states Dutch political party D66 in its election programme for 2021. With these statements, D66 tries to convince Dutch citizens to support the party in the upcoming national elections. D66 promises to create more…
Dutch political party VVD states in its current election programme (2021) that the Netherlands has one of the largest social rental sectors in Europe but that the waiting lists for social housing average nine years. The party promises to make social housing more available to people with smaller incomes by stimulating richer people to move…
Since the 26 of August, 2020, in Barcelona in the north-east of Spain, there is a ban, according to which Barcelona citizens cannot offer tourists accommodation in their apartments. The same day polish newspaper claimed that “Tourists in Barcelona will not be able to rent an apartment”, but this interpretation isn’t completely true. On August 26th, the Autonomous Government of…
Wpolitce.pl – a popular Polish right-wing news portal and TVP Info, a state news channel, report on alleged human trafficking taking place at Men Having Babies conference in Brussels. Misconception caused by terminology used in an article Due to the conservative predilection of the reporter – Grzegorz Górny – an article gains a tabloid tint.…
News about a Croatian amateur film director Mr Mario Šulina receiving the Golden Lion award for his film “Adam” stirred controversy in Croatia. In December 2020 commercial TV channel RTL published on its webpage RTL.hr an article with the following title: ”’Golden Lion’ went to Đakovo this year: Director Šulina in the interview for RTL.hr…
Daniel David, professor of clinical cognitive sciences and the rector of Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, talked to the publisher of Clujul Cultural about the state of education in Romania. “[…] 42% of 15-year-olds are functionally illiterate. It is sad, because in three years those who are now 15 years old shall be the ones who…
On the November 23 2020 Focus Association for Sustainable Development tweeted that: “Tests made by the Transport and Environment campaign group show that emissions of the three bestselling plug-in hybrid cars are 28–89% higher than advertised.” We rate it as true. In the tweet from the official account of Focus Association for Sustainable Development, the…
On 13th of December 2020 Dmitry Kiselyov, host of the Russian TV program “Vesti nedeli”, said that the Romanian soccer referee Sebastian Coltescu has been permanently banned from refereeing due to the fact that on 8th of December 2020 during the Istanbul-PSG match he said the word “negru” (which means “black”) regarding one of the…
In the case of the collapse of Alexei Navalny, Russian officials claim that “pancreatitis, not poison, caused Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to fall ill.” While the EU assumes poisoning, Russian officials are convinced that pancreatitis was the cause. Since no access to medical records is available, the claim is uncheckable”. First of all, a brief…
On 20 October 2020 Slovenian TV presenter Marko Potrč claimed in his Facebook post that the tests performed to detect the presence of the virus (PCR) do not tell if someone is actually infected or even contagious. He said that dr. Lejko Zupanc, infectious disease specialist, also had to admit this on national television. This…
Russian network edition «RIA NOVOSTI» reports: Nigel Farage, former leader of the British Independence Party and an ardent supporter of the country’s withdrawal from the EU, officially launched the Brexit Party.
During the last weeks work with EUfactcheck, I’ve dived into statements presented as facts, from politicians trying to convince others for better or worse. I’ve come across statements with no abutment in reality and truthful facts hidden behind questionable agendas. It has completely occupied my everyday life, trying to figure out whether a quickly presented…
The fact-check of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on 10 April:https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mostly-true-huge-crowd-of-3000-supporters-of-the-golden-dawn-party-gathers-for-the-announcement-its-european-parliament-ticket/ concerns a publication that refers to the event of the Greek far-right party Golden Dawn for the announcement of its prospective MEPs. The publication has been presented and analyzed in a misleading way as excessive titles were used that do not correspond to reality and…
The relationship between the EU and Turkey has been turbulent and difficult for many years. There has been a lot of dispute. Throughout the recent debate we came across a Facebook posting of Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the Austrian populist right-wing party Freiheitliche Partie Österreichs (FPÖ). In this posting Strache states that the FPÖ demands…
Since the controversial Facebook scandal, which was uncovered at the beginning of 2018, the topic of disinformation on the internet has become the focus of many discussions in the US election campaign. Even before the German federal election in September 2017, there were warnings to be vigilant against possible disinformation campaigns and propaganda incitement. Recently,…
It goes without saying that the refugee crisis is one of the biggest social and political problems facing Europe. In the past few years there have been a lot of statements made and discussions conducted about the impact of refugees. However, this has not led to any clarity in regards to the number of refugees…
During my high school years, the teachers would always tell us students about the importance of checking our sources before handing in essays, assignments and homework. The way they went on about it, nagging on us, made me understand that it was important for my schoolwork and eventually for my grades. What I didn’t quite…
On Friday, March 29, 2019 the website of the newspaper “Avgi” published a news item which was titled “The deadline for submitting applications to participate in the European elections for Greek citizens who live in another EU country expires today”. The item was chosen due to its importance for the Greek voters who live in…
When we started searching for second topic, we realized that statements of Croatian politicians are mostly based on predictions and promises. Fortunately, the political parties started to present their programmes and lists of candidates for the upcoming European elections. The candidates started to appear more in the media and the current Croatian MEP Biljana Borzan’s…
In a tweet from March 7, member of the European Parliament Gerolf Annemans (ECR) claimed that “Polarisation is democratic. Politically correct and dull ‘standardised thinking’ isn’t.” The concept ‘polarisation’ indicates moving towards ‘the extremes’ of a certain ideology and implies that there is no such thing as a political centre. We lined up the views…
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
