EUfactcheck takes another course during the corona crisis because we want to safeguard the journalistic and methodological quality of the published fact checks.
Times are strange and unpredictable now, with governmental regulations straining the work of journalists, with media dealing with changing truths from one hour to the next, with the undefeatable speed of social media countering false claims and statements, with difficulties for students of journalism to contact experts.
The educational core of our project (we’re not a 24/7 fact-checking site) and the intensive coaching of our students are also influenced by the closure of universities all over Europe and restrictions on information.
That’s why we’ve asked our journalism students not to focus specifically on debunking claims on corona. These will mainly turn out to be uncheckable anyway or have already been checked by other fact checkers. We did ask our students to publish blog posts about the media approaches and to monitor how journalism is handling this changed reality in Europe and beyond. If the circumstances allow it, our students can choose to check news on corona.
We will keep you informed with reliable and fact based information.
The information that the Queen has signed the bill was published by the Russian news agency Interfax on September 9, 2019. It says that Queen Elizabeth II has approved the document that postpones the country’s exit from the European Union if there is no agreement with Brussels by October 31, 2019, which allows to go…
Rumours have it that the EJTA project EUfactcheck is definitely going to stop after 26 May 2019. The political debates died down, the EU elections are all over. However, we consider the rumours to be false. Why would EUfactcheck continue to exist when there are no more election campaigns? That’s the argument behind the gossip…
On the 12th of May 2019, Maltese leader of the Nationalist Party, Adrian Delia, stated in Times of Malta that the upcoming European elections are “a referendum on abortion.” He continues that every seat going to the Labour Party would be a seat in the European Parliament in favour of abortion. Malta is the only…
AWAITING ELECTION RESULTS WE REPOST OUR MOST QUOTED FACT-CHECK On March the 4th Dutch leader of the right-wing Forum for Democracy Thierry Baudet reacted to a statement by liberal politician Rob Jetten about homophobia in The Netherlands. Baudet stated on Twitter: ,,Jetten’s anger about the increased homophobia in The Netherlands is justified, but he doesn’t…
On May 21st, during a political talk show on Italian television, Silvio Berlusconi said that, under his governments, Italy reached the lowest tax to Gdp ratio in the last 20 years, getting to 39%. This is mostly true.
Danilo Toninelli, Italian Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, made a number of claims the 30th April of 2019 referring to different economic aspects. First, that employment rates are the highest since April 2008. Second, that unemployment has fallen 0.4 points. Third, that unemployment among young people is the lowest in Italy since 2011, and fourth, that…
Dutch MEP Agnes Jongerius recently tweeted that the Netherlands has the most flexible labour market in Europe. Jongerius, MEP for the Labour Party (PvdA) speaks of a ‘flexible labour market’, but what is the exact definition? On March 2017 the University of Amsterdam published a report in which ‘flexible labour market’ is given an understandable…
With Brexit raising tensions ever higher in the British political landscape, talks of reuniting Ireland and Northern Ireland have surfaced again. In a 2016 document titled ‘Towards a United Ireland’, Irish political party Sinn Fein outlined how the reunification of Ireland and Northern Ireland might not be as costly as is popularly believed. Outlining the…
On March 7 2019 an article called ‘sustainable thinkers are often the biggest polluters’ was published by the Dutch RTL News. In that article, they link pollution to sustainable thinking. Sustainable thinkers would be above-average polluters. This is what the author of this article wrongly concludes from a research of Peter Kanne, member of I&O…
On the 30th of April, an article was posted on the website of Sp.a, the Belgian social democratic party, about air pollution. Kathleen Van Brempt, a Belgian politician and member of the European Parliament, stated in this article that 98% of the EU’s urban population is exposed to ozone levels that exceed WHO guidelines. The…
Since the controversial Facebook scandal, which was uncovered at the beginning of 2018, the topic of disinformation on the internet has become the focus of many discussions in the US election campaign. Even before the German federal election in September 2017, there were warnings to be vigilant against possible disinformation campaigns and propaganda incitement. Recently,…
It goes without saying that the refugee crisis is one of the biggest social and political problems facing Europe. In the past few years there have been a lot of statements made and discussions conducted about the impact of refugees. However, this has not led to any clarity in regards to the number of refugees…
During my high school years, the teachers would always tell us students about the importance of checking our sources before handing in essays, assignments and homework. The way they went on about it, nagging on us, made me understand that it was important for my schoolwork and eventually for my grades. What I didn’t quite…
On Friday, March 29, 2019 the website of the newspaper “Avgi” published a news item which was titled “The deadline for submitting applications to participate in the European elections for Greek citizens who live in another EU country expires today”. The item was chosen due to its importance for the Greek voters who live in…
When we started searching for second topic, we realized that statements of Croatian politicians are mostly based on predictions and promises. Fortunately, the political parties started to present their programmes and lists of candidates for the upcoming European elections. The candidates started to appear more in the media and the current Croatian MEP Biljana Borzan’s…
In a tweet from March 7, member of the European Parliament Gerolf Annemans (ECR) claimed that “Polarisation is democratic. Politically correct and dull ‘standardised thinking’ isn’t.” The concept ‘polarisation’ indicates moving towards ‘the extremes’ of a certain ideology and implies that there is no such thing as a political centre. We lined up the views…
Salaries of government officials are always under scrutiny. The payment of EU officials is no exception. ‘Top EU civil servants to pocket salaries over €20,000 a month for the first time’, reads a Telegraph headline from last December. ‘10,000 European Union officials better paid than David Cameron’, wrote the same paper back in 2014. ‘Over…
During our fact checking process, we’ve learned the meaning of perseverance, when we tried calling the politicians behind the statements checked for weeks with no response. We’ve had to develop stamina, as we stayed up all night writing and then had to make it to early meetings the next morning. And let’s not forget out…
Blog: Al-Jazeera insists that extremists and nationalists are preparing to purge the European Parliament in the upcoming elections
When we started our first-check, the idea was kind of strange to us, even though we are students journalism, the concept isn’t really integrated into our news cycle. When we went to look for examples, we found fact-checks about studies, political parties, news articles but not about real people or what they say. When…
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.
