July 10, 2024 Social media sees an endless stream of trends. A potential contender for the summer’s hottest: sunscreen is actually bad for you. At least, so say a number of TikTok users. News sites in the United States have been reporting that misinformation about sunscreen is spreading profusely on the bite-size video platform and […]
Fact check Malta: TikTok is soaking up sunscreen misinformation Read More »
July 8, 2024 On Saturday 6 July, an image showing what appeared to be a digger demolishing rainbow-coloured steps in a seemingly suburban street while a man stood watching a few metres away, was widely shared on Facebook. Amongst those who shared it was a self-proclaimed ‘personal blog’ page called ‘This is Malta’, which shared
Fact check Malta: Watch your step – image of rainbow steps being shared out of context Read More »
July 8, 2024 Shocking new revelations into a Steward-funded campaign orchestrated to smear former Health Minister Chris Fearne led inaccurate claims over whether this absolved Fearne of his ongoing legal troubles linked to a concession awarding three of Malta’s public hospitals to a private consortium. The deal was later taken over by US healthcare giant
Fact-check Malta: Do smear campaign reports clear Chris Fearne? Read More »
July 1, 2024 What do Malta’s former prime minister, a podcaster and a journalist have in common? They and others are the subject of a new scam circulating locally on social media. Cyber scams are becoming more sophisticated, though this latest one is not particularly ingenious. Consisting of posts identical in form and content, most
June 27, 2024 Several of Malta’s largest localities emerged from the local council elections held on 8 June with hung councils, after neither of Malta’s two main political parties obtained a majority of seats. In Birkirkara, one of Malta’s most populated towns, the Labour Party (PL) and Nationalist Party (PN) each won six seats, meaning
Fact-check Malta: Who gets to be mayor in Malta’s hung councils? Read More »
June 27, 2024 Rumours that a butcher on the island of Gozo was killing sick dogs and cats and selling them to customers as sausages spread like wildfire on Friday 21 June, causing panic and disgust in equal measure. They claimed that several people had fallen sick and were admitted to hospital over the weekend
June 20, 2024 Prior to the MEP elections held on June 8, 2024, the Maltese state broadcaster, TVM, aired an advert containing footage manipulated to support the agenda of a far-right MEP candidate. The advert was produced by far-right party Imperium Europa. It features the party’s founder and leader, Norman Lowell, urging people to “open
June 5, 2024 In the run-up to the European Parliament and local council elections held in Malta on 8 June, the leaders of the country’s two main political parties warned the public against voting for third-parties or independent candidates, saying that a vote for another party would be ‘wasted’. In truth, this is a familiar
Fact-check Malta: Are votes for small parties ‘wasted’? Read More »
June 4, 2024 this year’s elections saw some 370,000 people eligible to cast their vote for their preferred candidate for the European Parliament and almost 460,000 people vote for their local council representatives. Several online posts in recent weeks have spread confusion over who is eligible to vote, with some questioning the impact that Malta’s
Fact-check Malta: Who can vote in Malta’s elections? Read More »
May 18, 2024 Like his counterpart Prime Minister Robert Abela, Opposition leader Bernard Grech also used Malta’s workers’ day celebration to launch the Nationalist Party’s electoral campaign during a rally held in the town of Mosta. Times of Malta sifted through some of the claims made by Grech during his speech. Claim: Prime Minister Robert Abela
Fact-check Malta: Opposition leader Bernard Grech’s workers’ day speech Read More »
The Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory (MedDMO) is an alliance of fact-checkers, media literacy experts and scientists taking a coordinated approach to combating disinformation and misinformation.
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