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.
A candidate for the upcoming European Parliament elections, Tihomir Lukanić, expressed his concern with the implementation of 5G network at a press conference held by a Croatian political party Živi Zid (Human Shield). The claim turns out to be mostly false. The statement rose some questions in the media and provoked discussion on the dangers…
Does crime increase with migration? German right-wing politicans like Alice Weidel of the right-wing populist party AfD says ‘yes’. The criminal statistics seem to support this claim but the number of suspected criminals is small in all population groups. This quote is an excerpt of a Facebook post Alice Weidel published on 25 March 2019.…
In an article from the news site ‘De Standaard’ (date: March 8th), Brussels Airlines claims that no one takes the airplane only to travel from Brussels to Paris. This statement was made in the debate on the impact of short flights on climate change. In the article there is no mention of which sources or data…
According to an article on the website of Belgian newspaper De Morgen, the EU has decided that in order to exterminate the raccoon from EU countries the only solution is to shoot them. We rate the claim as mostly false.
After the attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Australian senator Fraser Anning has claimed that Muslims are often executors of terrorist attacks. This claim has received worldwide attention. What do the statistics say about the religious background of terrorism? The statement was published by the Australian senator Fraser Anning on the 15th of…
It sounds great: 1500 to 2000 euro per year for every Dutch citizen, only because the Netherlands is a member of the European Union. This is what the Dutch progressive liberal party D66 states in a twitter response to a promotional ‘Nexit’ video by extreme right PVV leader Geert Wilders. To good to be true?
Peter Rangwe, who is a free time politician, representing the political party Socialdemokraterna (the Swedish social democratic party) claims that the figures on youth unemployment 2018 in Sweden is the lowest in 17 years. Socialdemokraterna is the now reigning party. He also claims that Sweden received economical support by the EU in 2014, to cope…
On 25 March 2019, Antti Rinne, the Chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Finland, claimed in his electoral interview that based on the experiences in Sweden, the Finnish Ministry of Finance has estimated that getting online payment terminals would prevent the grey economy from occurring by 140 million euros per year in Finland. The…
Our report on the EU Fact Check focuses on a news item which was published on Friday, March 29, 2019, on the website of the newspaper “Avgi”. More specifically, the news item was titled “The deadline for submitting applications to participate in the European elections for Greek citizens who live in another EU country expires…
In a statement for one regional TV channel, a current Croatian representative in the European Parliament and a candidate in the upcoming European elections Mrs Biljana Borzan, said that two thirds of laws that are voted for in the European Parliament are being implemented in the Croatian legislation. The statement raised the question what the…
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
