AD is going to fact check: is what is claimed in provincial council election campaigns correct? | Politics

When Paul Rosenmöller, party leader for the Green Left in the Senate, said in an election debate on TV last week that ‘only one politician has been convicted of discrimination, and that is from the PVV’, it didn’t take long before the PVV leader in question responded. “Rosenmöller is a filthy liar. I was acquitted for that,” he tweeted.

Did the GroenLinks leader tell a lie? Geert Wilders was indeed convicted by the court for group insult and incitement to discrimination because of his ‘fewer Moroccans’ ruling in 2016. But he was acquitted of the latter on appeal in 2019, a decision that is now irrevocable . And Rosenmöller did not mention that.

However, it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Because on behalf of the PVV, Marjolein Faber (leader of the Senate party and leader of the Provincial Council in Gelderland) participated in the television debate of broadcaster WNL. Faber was discredited in 2019 by her own fake news. After a stabbing on a terrace in Groningen, she tweeted about the perpetrator: ‘What you should not know from the media: the confused man has a North African appearance’. However, witnesses report to the same media that it was a native Groningen citizen, which was later confirmed by the Public Prosecution Service. Faber insisted for a long time that ‘my tweet is correct’ and only admitted two weeks later that her message was ‘awkward’.

These are statements in debates (such as from Rosenmöller), messages from politicians on social media and the content of the election programs of the provincial parties on which the journalists of the General Journalthe affiliated regional newspapers and pointer (KRN-NCRV) from Monday to election day. Do the claims of the parties match the facts? Do the provincial councils have any say at all on that subject? The fact-checkers will mainly focus on the most important themes of the election campaign: housing, energy, the asylum issue, transport and the nitrogen problem.

Rennie Rijpma, editor-in-chief of the AD: ,,The Provincial Council elections are now perhaps more important than ever. Yet voters know little about the administrative layer that determines nitrogen and housing plans. It makes it easy to claim anything. We want to refute that with united forces.”

The journalists of pointer gained experience in the House of Representatives (2021) and municipal elections (2022). “We want to point out to voters the misinformation and disinformation that is being spread and that may influence voter voting behavior,” says René Sommer, editor-in-chief. KRO-NCRV. “For people who have doubts about a message or claim that they do not know if it is correct or are unable to verify its authenticity themselves, such a fact check can make all the difference for a voter.”

The journalists are supported by the News checkers of the Leiden University project of the same name. For several years now, that team has been checking questionable claims on social and other media and the patterns behind them on a daily basis. Alexander Pleijter, coordinator of the team, said earlier in this newspaper that fact-checking ‘is a matter of principle’. “If you let incorrect information take its course, things will go from bad to worse. You must have some kind of counterforce that shows: this far and no further. We fact check for the doubters. They wonder if something is correct, start googling and hopefully find good fact checks.”

The fact that checking messages on social media is necessary was recently demonstrated by BNR. The broadcaster offered, as a test, seven political advertisements with disinformation (‘the ballot boxes are closed’) and incendiary texts (‘To Kaag’s house with torches, set on fire!) to the TikTok app and asked them to be posted on March 15, election day. Despite the ban on political advertising on the app, six of the seven ads were approved. TikTok acknowledged that it was wrong and promised to improve. BNR withdrew the ads for placement.

The articles can be read at ad.nl/factcheck