Podcasts by Fact or Fake
FRANCE 24’s Europe team digs through news stories around Europe to shake out the truth from the trash. You can also catch the segment in our Talking Europe show on Saturdays from 12.10 pm Paris time.
Further podcasts by FRANCE 24
Podcast on the topic Nachrichten
All episodes
Was Germany's election campaign tarnished by disinformation? from 2021-11-15T14:57:35
September 26 was an historic moment in Germany. That day, voters went to the polls to choose who would succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor after almost 16 years at the helm. But the election c...
EU recovery fund: What's France's actual share? from 2021-10-08T18:30:54
Does France really have to pay back €67 billion for the EU's Covid-19 recovery fund, even though it's only receiving €40 billion? The claim was made by former Socialist French presidential hop...
Is Greece really pushing migrants back to sea? from 2021-07-20T14:27:20
Greece has a prominent role within the European Union on the issue of irregular migration. There have been allegations that Greece and other EU member states' border officials have been involv...
AstraZeneca vaccine: Did the UK benefit from negotiating their contract early? from 2021-07-20T11:22:08
The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine has been a source of tension between the United Kingdom and European Union, especially concerning the number of doses each party was due to receive. The UK was a...
Fake news: Spain's 'other' Covid-19 epidemic from 2021-07-19T16:17:53
Vaccines have been the subject of much fake news in Spain and elsewhere around Europe. Our team has looked into these false or misleading stories and studied the impact they have had on the ma...
Covid-19 vaccine: Is Bill Gates implanting us with 5G microchips? from 2021-07-19T11:39:16
One issue causing real concern about public health is fake news around Covid-19 vaccines. In France, anti-vaccine sentiment is already high, with 46% of people hesitant to get jabbed in Decemb...
Did the UK get the Covid-19 vaccine faster thanks to Brexit? from 2021-07-17T10:00:07
The UK has been deploying the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 since early December 2020. At that time, Matt Hancock, the British health minister, claimed that his government had been ...
Brexit: Good news for British farmers? from 2021-07-16T14:40:50
British farmers were some of the most fervent supporters of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. They had, on average, been receiving £27,000 (€34,000) a year each from the EU's Comm...
Is the EU trying to put the entire continent on 'Berlin Time'? from 2019-05-06T13:57:34
"European Parliament votes to create 'BERLIN TIME' that UK could be forced to adopt". That was the colourful claim from British tabloid the Daily Express on March 26. The article claims that M...
Are hormone-treated beef and chlorine-washed chicken really allowed in France because of the EU? from 2019-03-19T16:20:28
This story originated with a false declaration by the head of the European election candidate list for France's far-right Rassemblement National party, previously known as the Front National. ...
Did Sweden ban mandatory vaccinations? from 2019-03-11T16:13:23
Multiple articles have been published in various languages, claiming that Sweden has banned mandatory vaccinations. They appear to come from a communiqué put out by the controversial American ...
Did the EU Commission 'secretly' publish a 'no-deal' Brexit plan? from 2019-02-26T12:59:03
On February 17, the British tabloid The Sun on Sunday claimed to have uncovered a "secret" EU plan to avert chaos if the UK leaves the bloc on a no-deal basis. The Sun on Sunday describes this...
Has the European Parliament put the Russian Orthodox Church on a terrorist blacklist? from 2019-02-26T12:41:52
This is a recurring piece of fake news in Georgia, where more than 80% of the population follows the Eastern Orthodox traditions. It seems to have originated on the Georgian news site Mediacit...
Brexit flashback: Is Turkey joining the EU? from 2019-02-26T12:36:19
Is Turkey joining the EU? That was a claim made back in 2016, in one of nearly 1,600 pro-Brexit adverts run by the official Brexit campaign, "Vote Leave" and two associated campaigns, "BeLeave...
Is France about to hand over its Alsace and Lorraine regions to Germany? from 2019-02-26T12:17:03
Is France about to hand over its Alsace and Lorraine regions to Germany? This claim was widely shared by web users in January 2019 as France and Germany prepared to sign a new cooperation trea...
Have French Yellow Vest protesters been chanting 'We want Trump'? from 2019-02-26T11:55:26
This story was put about by an American conservative activist called Charlie Kirk on December 3, 2018 – and retweeted by US President Donald Trump. Kirk’s tweet lists claims about the Yellow V...
Does the UN migration pact really 'consider illegal immigration a human right'? from 2019-02-26T11:44:26
In this episode of Fact or Fake, we focus on a Swedish website with close ties to far-right and anti-immigrant groups. In November 2018, it published several false claims about the UN migratio...
Did the EU and UN distribute credit cards to undocumented migrants? from 2019-02-25T17:58:23
For a couple of weeks, a photo has been doing the rounds on certain European news sites. It shows a credit card, with the logos of the European Union and the United Nations refugee agency. Acc...
Did rescue ships really bring 'hundreds of thousands of immigrants each day' to Italy? from 2019-02-25T17:55:53
In this episode of Fact or Fake, we look at a claim made by Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. At the end of September 2018, he asserted that charity rescue ships were bringing "hundred...
Did Jeroen Dijsselbloem really 'invite the markets to launch an attack on Italian finances'? from 2019-02-25T17:53:18
On October 30, 2018, one of Italy's Five-Star Movement's official Twitter accounts tweeted a video with an Italian translation of Jeroen Dijsselbloem. He's the former head of the Eurogroup, wh...
Will British MEPs' salaries continue after Brexit? from 2019-02-25T17:52:22
Have British MEPs "forgotten" their staff? This story originated in the UK’s Daily Express newspaper. All British members of the European Parliament are supposed to stop working as MEPs once t...
Did Angela Merkel 'snub' Theresa May because of Brexit? from 2019-02-25T17:51:12
Russian business news website Gazeta.ru reported that Angela Merkel publicly snubbed Theresa May at the informal EU summit in Salzburg on September 20, 2018. The article states that the German...