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 the website of TVP Info, the Polish public television news channel has been published an article entitled “Scientists: leftovers of contraceptive pills go to water and poison the environment”. Due to the very complex nature of this topic our team decided to focus on two key statements from this article. First of all: “Research…
In a headline on Friday 19 June 2020 Belgian public broadcaster VRT NWS wrote that COVID-19 may cause more severe symptoms to people with blood type A. According to the article, people with this blood group therefore run a higher risk of serious symptoms when infected with the coronavirus. This conclusion came from an international…
The leader of the Slovenian National Party (SNS), Zmago Jelinčič Plemeniti, stated that there are 400 employees at the Ministry of Culture and that almost 30 years ago there were only around 40. The number of employees claimed during the special session of the Slovenian Parliament Jelinčič’s, is almost two times bigger than the actual…
In an interview with Stern.de, German economist Claudia Kemfert claims that international studies show that, for example, a male author benefits more from a scientific paper than a female author. This claim can be classified as “True”. The interview with Ms. Kemfert was published as part of a campaign by the German medium Stern under…
Did Pfizer wait on purpose? 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 bio-pharmaceutical company Pfizer waited on purpose for the end of the elections to publish news about the vaccine…
Greenpeace Slovenia tweeted via their account on 27 October 2020, claiming that “It’s official now – the solar energy is the cheapest source of energy in history!”. This is mostly true. Slovenian Greenpeace organization posted on their Twitter account stating that solar energy is from now on officially the cheapest source of energy in history.…
The Belgian news service “De Morgen” claimed that there’s at least 30 times more plastic on the bottom of the ocean than on the surface. The news service is referring to a study that took place at the Australian coast. Research if the claim can be applied to our European sea waters however, found proof…
The German News Show “Tagesschau“ claimed that after Brexit Referendum Brits move to an EU country. Although our research proved the fact true, we decided to classify the claim as mostly true because there are several Brits who left the UK before Brexit or had other reasons to leave the country. Due to the upcoming…
Flemish weekly Knack published an article on 22 October which explained that Belgium remains the biggest entrance gate for cocaine, in the whole of the European Union. More interesting was the fact that this statement was made about seizures of heroin: “The increase in seizures of heroin in the EU is mainly due to an…
In an interview published on the 15th of November by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the EP President, David Sassoli claimed: “The European Union has got 6 different vaccines, each of which will ensure 200 million doses”. According to official European Commission press releases, the EC reached 5 agreements with the pharmaceutical companies related to…
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
