CLAIM: 77% of young people in the UK don’t want Brexit.
CONCLUSION: Inaccurate. Polls for Great Britain show support from those aged 18-24 for remaining in the EU at between 57% and 71%; for Northern Ireland, between 48% and 57%. Continue reading Do 77% of young people not want Brexit?
CLAIM: Over one million lights will illuminate Lisburn city centre during a seasonal festival.
CONCLUSION: Marketing material for Lisburn Light Festival considerably overestimates the number of lights in the organised display. Our visual estimate of the main components suggests that there are around 200,000 lights, far short of the “over one million lights” estimate. Continue reading Over 1 million lights in Lisburn?
What is fact checking and why is it important?
by FactCheckNI
16 November 2018
WHAT IS FACT CHECKING?
The Oxford Dictionary describes fact checking as a process seeking to “investigate (an issue) in order to verify the facts”. However, while instructive, this necessarily concise definition is limited in its understanding of the practical outworkings of what constitutes fact checking, the variation and scope of its practices, as well as the factors and social, political and cultural contexts in which fact checking has become an established practice. Continue reading What is fact checking and why is it important?
CLAIM: Northern Ireland eats more meat than in the rest of the UK.
CONCLUSION: Accurate according to recent survey reports. For adults aged 19 to 64 years, the mean consumption in Northern Ireland was 82 grams per day, compared to 71 grams for all of the UK; yet for Ireland the figure is 108 grams (adults aged 18 to 64 years). Continue reading Does Northern Ireland eat the most meat?
Labour politician Lord Adonis recently tweeted that he finds it “scandalous that Ulster’s second city is still denied its own university”. He later acknowledged that Derry-Londonderry had its own campus as part of Ulster University, however its headquarters are in Coleraine. The university used to be called the New University of Ulster (NUU), which opened 50 years ago, and could have been based in Derry-Londonderry. Continue reading No university in Derry-Londonderry?
CLAIM: Within the LGBT community, 25% have attempted suicide.
CONCLUSION: Accurate result in line with other surveys with LGBT respondents in the UK and Ireland. The Rainbow Project survey figure of 4% of LGBT people attempting suicide in the prior year is also consistent with surveys by other organisations. Continue reading Have 1 in 4 LGBT persons attempted suicide?
