In the last few months, the European fact-checking community has been working to define the European Code of Standards for fact-checkers which was approved by 44 organisations this September.
After the creation of an umbrella organisation to oversee the network, the EFCSN has elected its first Governance Body to lead the association, evaluate compliance with the Code, help organisations reach the required standards, and represent fact-checkers from all over Europe in different conversations across the region.
The Governance Body is composed of 11 members – 5 from the organisations that make up the EFCSN Consortium which lead the project and 6 that have been voted and elected by the European community of fact-checkers.
- Ana Brakus is the executive director of Faktograf, publisher of Croatia’s first fact-checking news media.
- Clara Jiménez Cruz is the co-founder and CEO of Maldita.es, a Spanish non-profit foundation created to fight disinformation and lies in public discourse.
- David Schraven leads the German investigative newsroom CORRECTIV as publisher since 2014.
- Gülin Çavuş is the Co-founder & Head of Strategy at Teyit, a Turkish fact-checking organisation. She is responsible for suggesting strategic plans & projects for social impact and aligning the team with the organisation’s targets.
- Paweł Terpiłowski started working as a fact-checker in 2016, and since 2018 he has been the chief editor of Demagog Association, the first Polish fact-checking organisation recognized as an International Fact-Checking Network Signatory.
- Phoebe Arnold is one of the senior staff of Full Fact in the UK. She started when Full Fact was a small organisation and helped it grow during elections, the pandemic and the rise of online misinformation in public life.
- Sally Mairs has been an editor for AFP’s fact-checking team in Europe since early 2021, working with journalists who are debunking misinformation in a dozen different countries and languages.
- Stefan Voss is the head of verification at the German news agency dpa. He has been working for the Deutsche Presse-Agentur for over 20 years, including more than a decade as a foreign correspondent in Ukraine and Russia.
- Thomas Hedin has been a driving force in the creation and development of the Danish fact-checking organisation TjekDet, since it was established in 2016.
- Tommaso Canetta is the deputy director of Pagella Politica, the main Italian fact-checking outlet, and the coordinator of the fact-checking activities of EDMO.
- Vincent Couronne has been a journalist since 2017, the year he founded the French organisation Les Surligneurs, the first legal fact-checking media outlet.
This newly elected Governance Body will be presented in Brussels, Belgium, at a public conference on November 16th which will gather the main European stakeholders in the field of misinformation from EU institutions, digital media platforms and civil society. To attend the conference, you can register on the EFCSN’s website: https://eufactcheckingproject.com/get-involved-event/
European fact-checking organisations wishing to adhere to the Code of Standards and form part of the EFCSN can start applying to become a verified member from the beginning of next year.
