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.
A retired Finnish politician, Reijo Tossavainen of The Finns Party, claimed in a tweet on the 19th of April that “Corona masks are recommended everywhere else but in Finland”. This claim turns out to be false.
The international newspaper “Newsweek” published on 25 of October 2019 a topic titled “Female CEOs face ‘greater penalties’ than male CEOs for ethical transgressions”. The claim turns out to be uncheckable. In the article reporter Rosie McCall tries to prove the statement using the survey “How Leader Gender Influences External Audience Response to Organizational Failures“.…
The President of European Parliament David Sassoli claims on Twitter that the old European Stability Mechanism (ESM) doesn’t exist anymore and it has become a fund that all member countries can take advantage of without conditionalities, to cope with medical emergency caused by Covid-19 pandemic. The claim seems to be his remark following the Eurogroup…
On the 13th of January, Kathleen Van Brempt stated in the Belgian broadsheet De Standaard that Australian cars emit on average 45% more CO2 than their European counterparts. Van Brempt is a Member of European parliament for the Flemish socialist party sp.a. Her claim is true. In the European Parliament, Kathleen Van Brempt is responsible…
The British morning television presenter Eamonn Holmes recently said on air that the media in the United Kingdom did not know for sure that 5G does not cause covid-19.
In the prominent Dutch early-evening talk show De Wereld Draait Door (The World Keeps on Turning/DWDD) on Friday 20 March Rutger Bregman, historian and author, stated that long-term loneliness is as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
“Migrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina are massively moving towards Croatia! UN arbitrated, countries cannot return ‘climate migrants!”, states the title of an article published in the Croatian online news outlet Paraf.hr. The article makes a connection between the UN’s ruling that governments cannot return migrants to domicile countries where their lives are threatened by climate…
It’s a time of crisis. The outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is gripping the world. At the moment we still know very little about this virus, which lives under several names. One thing we all hope is that the virus will disappear as quickly as it has spread around the world. According to Dutch politician…
The news that Emmanuel Macron announced the closure of borders in the EU countries was published by the Russian socio-political and business newspaper Izvestia on March 16, 2020. The French President made a television appealto the nation because of the spread of coronavirus infection.
Geert Bourgeois, a representative of Flemish nationalist party N-VA in the European Parliament, claims in Flemish newspaper De Standaard (25.01.2020, paywall) that for every billion euros of exports, we create 14.000 new jobs in Europe. This statement comes in response to the trade agreement concluded with Vietnam in 2019. These figures turn out to be…
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
