In October 2021 students from EJTA EUfactcheck-schools will again publish their fact checks and blogs on this website. With in-depth research they unravel claims in a world between truth and confusion. With more cross-national collaboration we hope to keep you, our critical audience, alert on pan-European topics.
Journalist Kasper Goethals wrote an article for Flemish newspaper De Standaard on 6 February about the border agency Frontex. In it, Mark Akkerman of NGO ‘Stop Arms Trade’ claimed that companies like Airbus and Leonardo, who are supplying weapons to the Middle East, work with Frontex to stop refugees at the European borders. Akkerman’s research…
“European Commission famously doesn’t always move or react to democratic representations, even from its own member states”, said UK’s Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs George Eustice (Conservative Party) on the 25th of March 2021 in an article about EU ban on UK shellfish published by the BBC. The statement is uncheckable.…
World Health Organization’s European head Hans Kluge stated in a Reuters article that “Only 10% of the region’s population have received one vaccine dose, and 4% have completed a full course.” The article was published on 1.4.2021. The claim appears to be mostly true. According to Reuters the article is based on WHO’s press release…
The leader of Podemos party, Pablo Iglesias, stated during a televised electoral debate on 21 April that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the community of “Madrid is among the European cities with the highest number of deaths per million inhabitants (2,207) more than London, Paris, Rome or Berlin”. The claim turns out to be true.…
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is struggling not only with scandals involving its own personnel. According to Friedel Taube, a journalist at Deutsche Welle, it is also facing a Europe-wide loss of members – especially in the Catholic strongholds. By researching hard and soft factors, this claim can be evaluated as “mostly true”. A Christian baptism…
Thierry Baudet, a Dutch politician, claims that less than 2% of the people infected with the coronavirus experience symptoms. He made his claim on the 10th of January 2021 in the late-night TV show Op1. We rate the claim as false. Thierry Baudet is the front man of the political party Forum voor Democratie (Forum…
German MEP Joachim Kuhs wrote in an article, published on 15 December on his website, that the European Union was giving financial aid to Iran for the persecution of Jews and Christians. It would be 13,000,000 euros, a transfer described as “humanitarian aid”. The claim turns out to be uncheckable. Joachim Kuhs is a German…
This factcheck examines the origin and authenticity of the statement “Bulgaria has stopped using the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine”, made in an AlJazeera article. It turns out that the claim is TRUE.This topic is of extremely high importance for the health situation in Europe but more so for Bulgaria – the reactions towards the introduction of…
Bloomberg.com states that “Last month, the bloc leaders unanimously agreed on a common vaccine certification scheme, which is a priority for tourism-dependent countries like Greece and Cyprus.”
On March 25th, 2021, Laura Sachslehner, a member of the Viennese city parliament (ÖVP, Austria’s Peoples Party), Laura Sachslehner, posted a video excerpt of her speech claiming that “attacks on police officers are an everyday occurence in Vienna“. The politician does not cite any source to support her statement. Her claim is uncheckable. Laura Sachslehner’s…
With the premiere of the documentary “Francesco” which happened at the Rome Film Festival in October 2020, controversial opinions arose in various media about two certain points in the film. Pope’s statements “homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They are children of God. Nobody should be thrown out or be made…
On October 14, 2020, Fox News posted an article with the headline: “Trump and public health system have saved 2 million lives in coronavirus pandemic.” However, this statement raised our doubts and suspicions. Newt Gingrich, the author, did not provide any statistics: there are no illustrations or links. Firstly, we decided to check the statistics:…
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 biopharmaceutical company Pfizer waited on purpose for the end of the elections to publish news about the vaccine against Covid-19. However, Pfizer explained…
A female quota could be a way to achieve more equality between men and women but it’s a controversial topic. We’ve compiled arguments that speak for and against a female quota. Achieving full equality of rights and opportunities between men and women is a global issue. There has been an ongoing discussion in several countries…
The Brexit has impact on the British economy and the relation to the European Union (EU). Strong trade partners, like Germany, are also challenged with a possible “Hard Brexit”. Statistics provide economic data for importing and exporting goods from and to the EU. RESEARCH | ARTICLE © Karina Stark Leave your comments, thoughts and suggestions…
A prominent and internationally recognized Croatian scientist Mr Miroslav Radman was interviewed in one Croatian evening TV news called RTL Direkt. He was commenting on the COVID-19 situation in Croatia and said how he could not understand why there was so much panic since “we have 967 fewer deaths than last year“, a claim which…
I had five missed calls and several unread messages from my mom reading – “Jano, if you love me, please don’t go to the movie premiere”. I received the messages on November 8th, 2019. She was asking me not to go to see “And then we danced”, a movie directed by Levan Akin about youngsters …
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an overwhelming impact on every aspect of our lives, including drug use and supply, as is recognised by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) in its annual Drug Report. Like any other sector, the drug market has faced its setbacks due to the coronavirus. Nonetheless, users…
The Head of the trade branch of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce claims people can safely go visit Austria’s retail shops during the pandemic without facts undermining his statement. On October 27th, Rainer Trefelik, spokesperson for the trading branch in Austria’s Chamber of Commerce, sent out a press release, in which he claimed: “There is…
While working on the claim “Russian news services advertise Covid-19 demonstrations in Germany and dramatize them”, we came across some difficulties. Find out more in the Video. RESEARCH | ARTICLE © Feline Schütte (Text), Jasmin Keller (Visualisation), Annika Reinker (Illustration & Voiceover) Leave your comments, thoughts and suggestions in the box below. Take note: your…
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.
At the EJTA Teachers’ Conference in Dortmund (October 2019) practical details were discussed and a new publication schedule was created for autumn 2019.
By January-February 2019 a manual with guidelines and tips & tricks will be published and on 13-14 February 2020 a second Bootcamp will be organised in Ljubljana, with financial help from the Evens Foundation. This Train the Trainer will be focussing on Central Eastern European countries, but also on new participants that want to publish on the platform.
All the information about this event: nadia.vissers@ap.be
“What is this politician saying??” Did you read or hear a politician or public figure make a questionable claim? Send us an email with the claim and maybe we will fact-check it.
Please include the source (url and date) where you found the claim.
