On 9 February 2025, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his challenger Friedrich Merz met in a televised debate. The next day, the research newsroom CORRECTIV published its check of their figures under the headline Kandidaten argumentierten teils mit falschen Zahlen, the candidates argued partly with false numbers. Merz’s claim that Germany was in the third year of a recession, which had never happened before, was rated as missing context. A claim by Scholz on irregular migration was rated partly false. The public broadcaster ARD has run its own fact-checking desk, the faktenfinder, since April 2017.