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 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…
On March 30, 2021, ZEIT online claimed More hospitalizations of children with depression. Already before Covid 19 the number of young patients with depression increased by 24 percent in 2019. This claim turns out to be mostly true. The article addresses the issue of depression in children and adolescents. The author says that even before…
On 2 October 2021, Conner Rousseau (Vooruit) said in an interview that Belgium is the country that gives the largest amount of money to polluting diesel. Is this statement true? And maybe even more important: how and why does Belgium spend money on this fuel? After doing research and interviewing experts we can say that…
On 5 October 2021, British broadcaster and former politician Nigel Farage made a statement about wind energy in September 2021. During the show “FOX Business” on the broadcaster FOX he said that “in September wind energy only produced 2% of the energy needs”. This statement is mostly true. Nigel Farage is a British broadcaster and…
The lobby organization Initiative for Social Market Economy (INSM) published nine facts about the EU on their website. One of them is “One third of EU exports to South Korea are made in Germany”, which seemed to be true. The INSM is financed by employers’ associations and, according to its own statement, acts independently of political parties. As…
According to published research by Chinese scientists, human testicles are a potential target for the coronavirus infection COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The researchers found that the ACE2 receptor, through which this virus enters cells, is highly expressed in the testes.
Russia Today DE claims that there have been only four OSCE-observers at the German Bundestag elections this year, whereas there have been 59 at the 2017 elections. Though the numbers were not incorrect, RT DE left out crucial information about how they were formed, drastically changing the bottom line and possible interpretations of the claim.…
The Pandora Papers have revealed tax evasion from around the world. Peter De Roover, a Belgian politician, tweeted on October 7th: “The government doesn’t lose money because of tax evasion. She simply compensates through higher tax assessments on others. In fraud, the good taxpayer is the victim, not the government.” His claim is false. “RESEARCH…
On August 8th 2021, Alice Weidel, member of the German parliament and part of a right-winged populist political party, tweeted about Germany’s contributions to the European Union. She stated that the overall payments added up to almost 20 billion Euros, twice as much as France has paid. The claim turns out to be mostly true. According…
On 6th of September 2021, the former chancellor of Austria Sebastian Kurz made a statement during an interview with the Austrian TV-Channel ORF where he outlined that Austria is spending over one billion euros on development cooperation and humanitarian aid. He also said that since he is in charge the money Austria spends in this…
The Kremlin is engaged in hybrid warfare in order to strengthen its positions all over the world. To achieve its geopolitical goals, Russian authorities use a mix of different tools, including military, financial, economic, cultural and informational tools. During the last decade, the Kremlin has intensified the use of propaganda and disinformation as a weapon…
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…
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
