Five students of the Faculty participate in the EU Fact-check program in Germany
The students of the degree in Journalism represent the UAB during this week in Wilhelmshaven thanks to the short-term Erasmus program (BIP)
Five students of the Faculty have travelled this week to Wilhelmshaven, Germany to represent the University in the EU Fact-check program, organized by the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA). The central focus of the programme is on the verification of statements on press freedom in small groups made up of students from all over Europe. In this context, the five journalism students from the Faculty of Communication Sciences who participate in the program are: Blai Corpas Cuatrecasas, Pau Iglesias Gispert, Martina García Ballester, Estel Coletas Parés and Júlia Oró Escolà.
The course includes students from the University of Jade, Germany, which hosts and organizes the program; the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands; Haaga-Helia University, Finland; Thomas More University, Belgium; the University of Georgia, and the University of Mariupol, Ukraine.
Apart from the verification of statements, students attend a series of presentations on press freedom, fact-checking methods, European press systems and public media financing.
The journalistic products - fact-checks and explanatory pieces - that come out of this stay will be published on the EUFact-check website. Each of the Faculty’s representatives works on a different subject with their own group, for example, the criminalisation of journalists in Russia and Belarus or the freedom of the press in Germany.
The student Pau Iglesias Gispert highlights the academic and personal value of the experience: “For me, participating in this experience is a reason for personal and collective pride. I am very happy to be able to represent my university in Germany, together with my fellow journalists. In addition, being able to work on fact-checking methods and meet new people will remember it for a long time. I feel very lucky and grateful to be able to live this experience.”.
Along the same lines, Blai Corpas Cuatrecases highlights the intensity of the journalistic work and the support received during the program: “Being able to spend a whole week verifying a sentence is a privilege. In addition, I have the support of a wonderful team of students, and we are lucky to be tutored and guided by a very good teacher”.
The program also has sociocultural proposals for all the members of the course such as visits and activities to understand the context of the region where the stay is carried out, Lower Saxony and its relationship with the North Sea. The students will also visit the city of Bremen and the studies of its public radio. It is the smallest regional radio within the ARD, the German Public Broadcasting Institutes Consortium. This consortium has nine regional radio stations covering the sixteen German lands.