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, in 2025 the topic is ‘Climate Reporting’.
EUfactcheck, an initiative of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) fights mis- and disinformation about European policies and topics. Journalism students from all over Europe factcheck claims and statements made by politicians and others and rate them. Our focus is not to debunk fake news but to give correct information to the reader.
Bart De Wever, the mayor of the Belgian city of Antwerp and chairman of the Flemish right-wing political party N-VA, claimed that “Belgium has the highest public expenditure and the highest structural deficit of the EU.” EUfactcheck looked into this claim and the source it was based on, and found out that the statement made…
An article titled “Sustainable Aviation: Increased cost of greener aviation will curtail pax demand” posted in TR Business (a business to business trade magazine) on 17 April 2023 reports that greener aviation will lead to a loss of thousands of jobs, higher travel costs and low passenger demand. As climate change due to air carbonization…
On the 19th of February 2023 Sam Tonkin, a Britain based journalist from the Daily Mail published an article about sea level rises around the United Kingdom that could cause floodings in the country. Tonkin stated in the article: ‘Terrifying interactive map reveals the areas that could be plunged UNDERWATER by 2050 amid sea level…
On January 18, 2023, Marie-Fleur Agema, a member of the political party Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, PVV), said: “Violence against emergency workers is on the rise… One in five healthcare workers wants to leave their job in healthcare because of aggression and fear of aggression.” The claim turns out to be mostly…
Former Barcelona mayor Xavier Trias stated in an interview that “cars are related to pollution, but have nothing to do with climate change”. He added that “we should not mix concepts, since then good-faith people end up joining battles which are not connected”. After analyzing different scientific reports, the claim turns out to be false. …
In an article titled “Italy became the first Western country to ban ChatGPT. Here’s what other countries are doing”, published on April 4, 2023 by CNBC.com, and updated on April 17, 2023, it is reported that Italy has become the first Western country to ban ChatGPT. This claim turns out to be true. The author…
The German federal Minister of Food and Agriculture said in an interview with the German news website “Der Spiegel”, that eating less meat would be a contribution against Putin. According to our research, it turns out that this statement is mostly false. In the Spiegel interview from 18th March 2022, Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir addresses…
On Oct. 18, 2022, Germany’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, claimed on ZDF’s Morgenmagazin: “Germany doesn’t have too few caregivers measured against the population, we just use them very inefficiently.” We find this claim to be uncheckable. Germany has a shortage of care workers and it appears that the situation will become worse in the future.…
On October 23, 2022, Mirjam Herrmann, a Member of the climate activist group “Letzte Generation” threw mashed potatoes on the Claude Monet painting “Les Meules” and asserted: “We are in a climate catastrophe… I’m afraid because science tells us that we won’t be able to feed our families in 2050.“ Though her concerns are valid,…
On December 10th 2021, Boris Vujčić stated in a press conference that people should not fear higher prices after the introduction of the Euro in Croatia. He claims that in recent years wages grew more than prices in the countries that introduced the euro. Our investigation concludes that this claim is mostly true. In 2023…
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…
On May 22, 2020, the PIQUE Magazine, an English-language publication in Canada, wrote in an opinion piece by journalist Andrew Mitchell that “Statistically, men are 17 times more likely than women to murder someone”. However, the author did not provide any links to statistics: there are no illustrations, nor did he offer any further evidence.…
“A toxic alien is taking over Russia”, is the headline of an opinion piece in The New York Times on October 3. According to her, hogweed is an extremely poisonous plant, dangerous not only for people, but also for local flora, and the territory occupied by hogweed in the Moscow region alone is 270 square miles, but…
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
