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Admission Criteria
Admission Criteria

Preamble

Many disinformation narratives travel across borders. It is common for hoaxes, manipulated media and unverified rumors to spread widely in one country and reach others in a matter of days, if not hours. Cooperation between fact-checkers across Europe is therefore crucial for monitoring and countering disinformation. Fact-checkers have to satisfy the following criteria to be admitted, as assessed by a committee set up by the Advisory and Executive boards of EDMO.

Admission Criteria

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Focus on Europe (intended as the countries of the Council of Europe plus Kosovo, Belarus or Russia): Any fact-checking organisation willing to become a user of the platform has to be established in Europe, and have a demonstrable focus on Europe in all or at least a significant part of its activities. Being a member of the EDMO hubs will be considered a sufficient demonstration of compliance with these criteria.
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Competence: Applicants will have to demonstrate competence in fact-checking and to be active projects, having published at least 15 fact-checking articles in the 3 months before the application. Being signatories of the Code of Principles of the International Fact-checking Network will be considered a sufficient demonstration of compliance with this criteria.
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Transparency: Applicants will have to disclose and avoid any potential conflict of interest, including work, consulting activities, share-owning or funding from any company or organization in the social media / digital media sphere. Applicants must disclose their organizational and proprietary structure, and be free of influence or control over them by political parties or movements.
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Ethics: Applicants must comply with the applicable rules of ethics in their area of expertise.

Workflow for assessing applications

1.  Application is received.

2.  Application will be sent to the external Assessment Committee, composed by 10 experts chosen by the Executive Board and the Advisory Council. One member will be appointed to work on the application.

3.  Within four working days the Committee provides a recommendation as to whether the application should be accepted or not, marking with “Pass” or “Fail” every acceptance criterion with short comments, if needed.

4.  The Committee’s recommendation is sent to a committee of three members from the Advisory Council who have three working days to reply on whether they agree or disagree to the recommendation. If a member disagrees s/he has to provide reasoning for this. If someone fails to answer within three working days, the rest of the votes are counted. If there is a draw, two more working days are provided for the third member to answer. If there is still a draw the decision is taken based on the recommendation of the Assessment Committee (which may change given the comments from the Advisory Council).

5.  The result is sent to the applicant by the Secretary General, with an indication on which criteria they failed (if any) and short comments.

6.  If the application has been rejected the candidate has the opportunity to appeal once within seven calendar days, with additional information addressing the rejection criteria. Upon appeal the same process described above (points 1-5) is followed and the result is considered final.

7.  Accepted applications are passed to ATC, in order to proceed with providing the necessary access.