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AFP consolidates its position as a world leader in fact-checking by extending its Central Europe network
With the launch of fact-checking operations in Bulgaria and Hungary in March 2021, following Romania in November 2020, AFP has consolidated its position as the world’s leading agency in digital investigation.
This growth underscores our commitment to efforts to combat the spread of disinformation by verifying content on the social networks via a new contract with Facebook and in total editorial independence.
Our new journalists in these three countries join a team already in place in Central Europe and covering countries that include Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia.
In Bulgaria our digital verification journalist is Rossen Bossev who publishes his fact checks on AFP Proveri. Prior to joining AFP, Rossen worked at Capital newspaper for 16 years, covering topics related to the judiciary, law enforcement and human rights.
In Hungary our fact checker is Ede Záborszky who was previously a journalist for Index, one of the largest and oldest online news sites in the country. His fact checks are at AFP Ténykérdés.
Paula Căbescu is our journalist in Romania and her articles are at AFP Verificat. Before joining AFP, Paula was a fact checker at "Factual", the first site in Romania dedicated to verifying political statements.
AFP now has 23 journalists working solely on digital verification in Europe, outside of France. Covering 17 countries and a dozen languages, they work closely with the agency’s entire editorial staff.
"With Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, the AFP creates a tight network to combat misinformation in an area particularly exposed to it," said Christine Buhagiar, AFP's Europe regional director.
Since its launch 2017, AFP’s digital investigation service has grown to become the largest in the world. It now includes nearly 100 journalists covering more than 80 countries in collaboration with our global network of journalists.
We produce fact checks in 20 languages: Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, Bahasa Malay, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish and Thai.
AFP is part of the International Fact-Check Network, which sets a global standard through a code of principles. We work with Facebook to identify and flag misinformation on its network.
About AFP:
AFP is a leading global news agency providing fast, comprehensive and verified coverage of the events shaping our world and of the issues affecting our daily lives. Drawing from an unparalleled news gathering network across 151 countries, AFP is also a world leader in digital verification. With 2,400 staff representing 100 different nationalities, AFP covers the world in six languages, with a unique quality of multimedia storytelling spanning video, text, photos and graphics.