Statement checking
Many years ago, after a tiring day at a DG Trade meeting in Brussels, I was reading the Financial Times on the plane. Somewhere in the back pages, a few sentences of what was called minus news caught my attention. It gave readers information on exactly the subject that was being discussed at the meeting that day. To my surprise, the FT news did not correspond to reality, in fact it was quite the opposite. When I got home the next day, I contacted our NGO experts and asked them to try to start a rectification procedure on the FT’s news. As we know, press rectification lawsuits allow very tight deadlines, so we had to hurry to get the real facts and find a pro bono law firm that would take on this case. In the end, the fact-checking took more than 2 months and we could not find a law firm to represent us in the press redress case against the Financial Times. Many years have passed since then, but the situation has not changed. Both the world press and especially social media are full of inaccurate, unscientific or deliberately misleading news and information. Western democracies are fundamentally threatened by this process. Fortunately, fact-checking journalists are increasingly investigating the reality of the situation, but these accurate figures are no longer reaching the general public. The situation is even more difficult with complex, cross-jurisdictional allegations that are damaging to the interests of those in power and cannot be dealt with through the normal fact-checking process. Therefore, we decided to examine some of the statements related to the democratic rule of law in the framework of the GTA Integrity Institute Hungary with scientific rigour and to publish the results of our analysis.
Our idea is that both our own experts and, later on, anyone can come to us to verify the veracity of a statement. The designated experts will, taking into account the capacity of the time period, examine the source of the statement, check its accuracy and decide whether to accept the request. Both the statement and the source are then posted on our website, which is indicated by three colours to indicate the current status. On the one hand, we use blue to indicate that the investigation is still in progress, and green and red for the results. The green colour indicates that the statement has been proven to be true, and after careful investigation its correctness can be established. Red indicates an untrue statement. Where appropriate, the methodology, key sources and findings used in the statement checking process will be published in a separate report. These will also be made public.
Samples of ongoing and closed fact-checking communications.
GTA Fact-check
Statement:
Source:
Date:
Status: Investigation in Progress
GTA Fact-check
Statement:
Source:
Date:
Status: Investigation Closed – Statement Verified as True
GTA Fact-check
Statement: the reasons for the closure of Transparency International Hungary (TIMTE) were lack of funds, lack of social interest and accreditation uncertainty.
Source: Dr. Zolna Berki, the last president of the association and later its liquidator; minutes of the general meeting of 1 March 2005, page 1
Date: 09 August 2025
Status: Investigation Closed – Allegation False or Misleading
- the Soros Foundation has transferred USD 14,000 to the association this year, of which USD 4-4,000 were not used for operations, but were transferred to the Romanian and Bulgarian organisations. So there was still HUF 3.2 million in the account;
- the association was professionally impeccable, published three volumes of studies on corruption, and the claim of social disinterest is false;
- the “uncertainty of accreditation” is not explained, it is referred to on the second page of the minutesw: “If the organisation is not accredited, the association may no longer use its name.” In fact, Miklós Marschall, European Director and then Deputy Director General of Transparency International’s International Secreteriat (1999-2017), subsequently devised a system which ultimately led to the dissolution of the Hungarian member organisation, which was operating in the national interest. The court documents include a previous statement by Peter Eigen, the head of TI, that he had authorised the use of the name, so the accreditation uncertainty could have been managed with sufficient autonomy.