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, hosted by EJTA member Hogeschool Utrecht, the Netherlands. The next year EJTA member Universitat Autonoma Barcelona in Spain offered the EUfactcheck Lab on ‘Climate Change’. In 2026 the topic is Press Freedom. In the first week of May students from 7 EJTA schools meet at Jade University in Wilhelmshaven.
EUfactcheck, an initiative of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) fights mis- and disinformation about policies and topics in Europe. Journalism students from all over Europe factcheck claims and statements made by politicians and others public figures, and rate them as true or false. Our focus is to give correct information and context to the reader.
Domestic violence cases have jumped by 30 per cent during lockdown in France. Being confined at home with abusive partners increases the risk to victims. A TV report on Channel One Russia, covering the situation in France, included the claim that using code word “mask-19” is a common practice among French women to let people…
In a column published by The Guardian, former universities minister Chris Skidmore makes the claim that there’s a higher risk for poorer students dropping out if universities shift online. This article—based on a study from 2017—was posted 4 May, 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis forcing many universities to close and offer fully…
Monika Schnitzer, a German Professor of Economics at Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, stated in an interview with the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on May 5th: “My assumption is that the manipulation of the diesel engines and this fraud on the customer wouldn’t have happened if women have had a say in the top-level management.”. She also claims…
Worldwide many influential religious and political leaders are linking the coronavirus to the legislation of same-sex marriage. They claim that the outbreak of the pandemic is the punishment and reckoning of God. These statements are uncheckable by nature, but to show how widespread this kind of misinformation is, EUfactcheck gives an overview of the different…
“This crisis affects women differently than men”. This claim by Dutch politician, writer and former diplomat Petra Stienen who was elected in June 2015 as a member of the Senate of the Netherlands representing social-liberal party D66 is mostly true.
Reuters has published a topic concerning “Slovenian government called an official end to its coronavirus epidemic, becoming the first European country to do so” on 15th of May 2020. Wrote by Marja Novak, The claim turns out to be true. The Slovenian government late on Thursday called an official end to its coronavirus epidemic, becoming…
The coronavirus has been infecting people worldwide for over half a year now. We know more and more about the disease that causes Covid-19. It plays a substantial role in our lives nowadays and many statements are made about the virus. Thierry Baudet, leader of the Dutch political party Forum for Democracy (FVD) said, at…
The information about the intention of the European Commission to finance development of media literacy in Russia was published on the website of Russian international news channel RT on April 15, 2020. It is reported that EC is going to provide EUR 3.200.000 within the framework of the grant for the promotion and protection the freedom…
On the 6th of May 2020, the BBC published a story with the headline “Climate change and coronavirus: Five charts about the biggest carbon crash”. The article goes on to state that “We’re living through the biggest carbon crash ever recorded.” This claim is uncheckable.
Amnesty International published an article on April 3, 2019 on the flawed legal system in Scandinavian countries. “The law leaves victims of sexual violence out in the cold.” We checked whether Amnesty International’s article on the flawed legal system, when it comes to rape, is correct. Little has changed since then in the Scandinavian countries.
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
