EUfactcheck #8 ‘Cross-national fact checking’

This winter season students from the EJTA journalism schools will work together in cross-national teams on fact checks and blogs. A variety of European topics will be addressed: polarisation, climate change, migration, defence budgets and more. Follow us here or on our Twitter and Facebook page.

EUfactcheck, an initiative of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) fights misinformation about European policies and topics. Journalism students from all over Europe factcheck claims made by politicians and others and rate them. Our focus is not to debunk fake news or disinformation but to give correct information to the reader.

Latest fact-checks

fact checking

Mostly False: “The refugee crisis has made Germany more insecure”

The German right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) criticizes the refugee policy by Angela Merkel in Germany. In a press release from April 2019, Chairman Alexander Gauland claimed: Migrants drive up the crime rate in Germany. Especially now with the federal election upcoming, the AfD still holds this position – even though the refugee crisis is…

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Mostly true: “Wind is the most important source of energy“

On 5thMarch 2021, Tagesschau.de reported on the energy supply in Germany and stated wind as the most important source of electricity. They claim that in 2020 for the first time more electric power had been generated with wind energy than with coal and that renewable energy achieves a record high. The claim turns out to…

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Mostly true: The US and China have been “leading in investment into AI”

“The US and China have been the ones that have been innovators, and leading in investment into AI”, EU law professor Anu Bradford said. In April, she made the statement in an article discussing the European Union’s approach to artificial intelligence in the newspaper Financial Times. Research shows her claim is mostly true. In April,…

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fact checking

Mostly false: 99% of landings from EU-managed stocks are sustainably fished

On the 4th of February 2021, Europêche released a statement on their website that claimed 99% of the landings from EU-managed stocks were fished sustainably. Research shows the claim is mostly false. Europêche is an organization representing vessels and fishermen from ten European countries. They promote fluent communication between the European institutions and the fishing…

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Mostly true: “Poverty remains a major problem in Romania and the value of work in Romania is more than 3 times lower than the EU average”

Mostly true: “Poverty remains a major problem in Romania and the value of work in Romania is more than 3 times lower than the EU average” On the 1st of May 2021, which is symbolically deemed Labour Day, Raluca Turcan, the Romanian Minister of Work and Social Protection, took to Facebook in order to convey…

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Mostly true: “8 out of 10 migrants who came to Europe in 2020 were men”

Nicolas Bay, vice-president of the European Identity and Democracy Group, claimed during the plenary session of 19 January that more than eight out of ten migrants to are adult men. This claim is based on an official Frontex press release and turns out to be true. “Though it’s not the whole picture,” says Ciara Bottomley,…

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Mostly true: “The UK is setting the most ambitious target to cut emissions in the world”

The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his country is cutting carbon emissions by 78% by 2035 in what he claims is ‘the most ambitious target in the world’. He made this claim on the 20th of April 2021, days after it was agreed stronger pledges were necessary to tackle climate change. The claim turns…

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Latest blog posts

© Kayla Empey, 2020

Media monitoring: the relationship between the coronavirus and weather in British media

Since the coronavirus outbreak, there has been an ongoing conversation within the media worldwide about weather and its potential impact on the virus. Weather is a complex topic, as there are a lot of aspects to be considered. Elements such as temperature, humidity, latitude, people staying inside more when it is cold, vitamins due to…

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female heads of state gender equality

Blog: EU: Do female heads of state ensure gender equality?

Writers Julia Harder and Gwen Rochat, Journalism students at Windesheim University Zwolle, The Netherlands, noticed a tweet from the Icelandic Prime Minister, saying Iceland is the frontrunner in gender equality. In making this factcheck, we realized there is no yes/no answer to our question: the situation is far more complex. For example, we expected that…

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Blog: Widely known COVID-19 conspiracies in Georgia

Coronavirus pandemic has been accompanied with a dissemination of fake news and conspiracy theories. Georgia was no exception, as various groups, including pro-Kremlin, ultra-national, and radical groups have been referring to COVID-19 as an artificially created virus, spreading fear, and associating the virus with the 5G Internet. One of the authors of the disinformation and…

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© Veera Nikkanen, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences

Blog: Covid-19 News Coverage Highlights Agriculture’s Dependence on Migrant Workers

During the first weeks of the pandemic, headlines were about people hoarding toilet paper and long-lasting goods such as pasta and dry yeast. The concern about agriculture and gardening industries started to gain headlines as the pandemic continued to spread We analysed media coverage of agricultural themes from March 19 until the end of April.

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Media monitoring: Sports websites look back and inspire to start moving

During this lockdown we started “media monitoring” of sports websites. This implies that we’ve been scanning different sports websites during Corona times to find out how they approach news reporting right now and if we could find any similarities or differences between them. During this period we decided to focus on three different sports websites,…

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Photo Credits: Elina Sonkajärvi, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences

Blog: News coverage on cross-border working revealed a divided EU in the fight against covid-19

The free movement of people is one of the four fundamental rights of the EU. Due to the newly introduced border restrictions across the continent caused by the pandemic of Covid-19, this right cannot be fulfilled as before. Terminologically, the media coverage of the situation has been framed with the use of words with negative…

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European Journalism Training Association EJTA
Council of Europe
evens foundation
Group photo EUFACTCHECK 240119

The EUFACTCHECK project

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.

Our history

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 

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