On May 3rd, during the global observance of World Press Freedom Day, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a speech regarding the safety of media professionals, marking the occasion and highlighting the systemic failures that continue to obstruct the work of the press and endanger lives worldwide. In his speech he made the claim:…
When we started our fact-check, we thought it would be a fairly simple task. The claim was about the number of journalists killed in different wars. Find the numbers, compare them, and determine whether the claim was true or false. However, the deeper we went into the research, the more we realised that it was…
In addition to critically questioning the source, journalists must also learn to interpret statistics correctly. A basic knowledge of statistics is usually enough. Fake statistics At the beginning of April, a graphic relating to the Russian recapture of the Kursk region appeared on the messenger service Telegram. The supposed graphic from Statista shows how many…
In this blog post you will find a reflection on the fact-checking process of four students from the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences. It was a really interesting and new experience to go through and we would surely recommend everyone who is just in the least bit interested in journalism, to go through…
The British morning television presenter Eamonn Holmes recently said on air that the media in the United Kingdom did not know for sure that 5G does not cause covid-19.
In the prominent Dutch early-evening talk show De Wereld Draait Door (The World Keeps on Turning/DWDD) on Friday 20 March Rutger Bregman, historian and author, stated that long-term loneliness is as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
When you live in a democratic country, there’s no reason to deny that politicians have a very big influence on the people. It’s their job to make us feel safe, guarded, keep the economy flowing, provide enough jobs and make sure the country works the way it’s supposed to work. Still we don’t always see…
Most students, deeply entrenched in data research, have ‘grabbed’ for pizzas, at some time or another. So have I. Over the past three years I’ve been on the other end of the table, coaching young fact-checkers on their journeys to yet another election. Helping them to find their way in heaps of data, supporting them…
On 7 March 2019 the Dutch website RTL News published an article titled: “Sustainable thinker often the worst polluter”. The article claimed that several connections could be made between sustainable thinking and polluting behaviour. In other words: those who claimed to worry about the environment were often the ones who polluted more.
With great enthusiasm we started the European Factcheck project this winter. Working together with 19 J-schools in 15 European countries is interesting. Besides that, we underline the bigger aim of this project: teaching students verification skills to become eager journalists to make ‘a better world’. Students don’t always like doing research but when you say…