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…
The current European agricultural policy runs until 2020. The discussions about this policy for 2021 have therefore started. Following this discussion, Menno Bentveld, a reporter at the Dutch national radio station NPO Radio 1 called Bas Eickhout, MEP on behalf of GroenLinks. Eickhout claimed that 80 percent of the European agricultural money goes to the…
German politician Sahra Wagenknecht (The Left) has criticized the reform of the German labour market by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, called “Agenda 2010”. She makes this reform responsible for one of the largest low-wage sectors in Europe. Some of her numbers are correct but not all of them.
According to the data presented in the article of the Russian Internet portal “Russian Informational Agency “Novosti” on 3 of May, 2019, European Parliament elections voter turnout has steadily decreased since the late 1970’s.
In an election debate in the Dutch news programme Nieuwsuur, European taxes for plane tickets were discussed. If and when this becomes reality, fast alternatives are important. According to Esther de Lange, member of the European Parliament for the Christian democrats, alternatives are still not fast enough to be an option. She said: ‘The travel…
This claim has been made in several Dutch election programs for the upcoming European elections. The problem boils down to the definition of a profession, but we rate the claim as mostly false.
Dutch party leader Derk Jan Eppink of Forum for Democracy (FvD) claimed in a televised elections’ debate on 13 May that the Dutch Greens are not very eager to contribute financially to climate change. Eppink based his claim on a recent survey by Ipsos and, as it seems, on an article in national newspaper De Telegraaf.…
On April 2, Finnish politician Asseri Kinnunen sent out a claim on Twitter about the willingness to defend one’s country in the three most populous EU countries. Kinnunen is the chairman of The Finns Party Youth and a candidate in the upcoming European Parliament elections. The tweet was part of the discussion around the Finnish…
“Yearly, 825 billion euros in tax payments are being evaded in the European Union. On top of that, the EU loses 160 to 190 billion euros due to tax avoidance.” This is a claim by Belgian politician and MEP Kathleen Van Brempt. Astronomical numbers, but where do they come from? And how reliable can these…
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…
By Tringa Hasaj Russia Today (RT) UK posted a video on Twitter on March 11th 2019 about a rising of right-wing parties in Europe. We believe the claim to be mostly true. The poll was first reported on by Bild on March 8th. The survey supposedly reveals that right-wing parties in Europe will double…
In our pursuit of an interesting topic for our first fact check analysis, we decided to watch the most popular weekly Croatian TV talk show Nedjeljom u 2. In one episode, the guest was Mislav Kolakušić, a prominent judge in Zagreb’s Commercial Court who has become popular for his strong views on politics and current…
What role did the media play in the run-up to the Dutch provincial and Senate elections of 20 March? These were won by the far-right populist Forum for Democracy and its leader Thierry Baudet. Shouldn’t the media have fact-checked, corrected and brought to attention the danger that the party and its leader present? This is…
A young Austrian politician and candidate for the EU parliament election recently stated that there were between „25.000 and 30.000 lobbyists“ working in Brussels“ spending around 1,15 billion Euros (yearly) in order to influence policies and laws. One would assume that numbers are easy to verify. We thought so as well. However, we got confronted…
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.
