In any conflict situation, professional media personnel are at receiving end. Likewise, several media persons in Ukraine are working at a very difficult scenario. While couple of them was killed in Russian army attacks, several others are being harassed in multiple ways.
Reports suggest that at least 11 civilian journalists or media workers have been killed as on March 18, 2022, during the conflict. Several others have been missing or detained by Russian army. However, probably for the first time in recent time international media personnel are given free access to frontline of war field and in large number they are seen in Ukraine, ignoring lethal attacks on them too by Russian army.
“Every day, journalists and media workers are risking their lives in Ukraine to provide life-saving information to local populations and inform the world of the reality of this war,” Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, said in a statement.
“We are determined to support and protect them in every way possible. UNESCO has been resolutely committed to this since the beginning of the crisis, in close collaboration with its international partners and local professionals,” she added.
The Geneva-based Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) said that 3,000 foreign journalists are working in Ukraine but six have been killed, dozens wounded and two kidnapped by Russia since Feb 24. The journalists were killed under various circumstances from shrapnel after a rocket attack to a bullet wound, Anadolu Agency quoted the global media safety and rights body.Half of the journalists killed were covering battles near Kyiv and near the city of Irpin.
“PEC expresses serious concern and condemns the killing of journalists in Ukraine, who have been reporting from the ground after the Russian invasion, and urges all concerned to respect freedom of the press,” said PEC’s Nava Thakuria.
In a very recent incident, Russia had launched a criminal case against a popular journalist for alleging that the Russian army deliberately shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. Alexander Nevzorov is the first prominent reported to be probed for spreading “false” information about the Russian army, under the very recent Russian legislation.
Condemning this action, the European Federation of Journalists (EPF) General Secretary Ricardo Gutierrez said: “As one might expect, the Russian censorship law is primarily intended to prevent journalists from telling the truth about the war crimes committed by the Russian occupiers in Ukraine.”
Just two days ahead of marching of its troops into Ukraine, on March 22,022, the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s legislature, adopted amendments to the criminal and administrative codes that would impose fines of up to 5 million rubles (US$48,245) and prison terms of up to 15 years for those convicted of disseminating “fakes,” or information that authorities deem to be false, about the actions of Russia’s government bodies abroad, This was clearly intended to target journalist, who may `dare to report facts’ during war.
Foreign media suspending work in Russia
Following this repressive legislation against journalists, several international media houses have suspended their activities from Russia. The BBC has temporarily suspending its journalists’ work in Russia, in response to a new law which threatens to jail anyone Russia deems to have spread “fake” news on the armed forces.
BBC Director-General Tim Davie said the legislation “appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism”. The Kremlin objects to the conflict being called a war, instead calling it a “special military operation”. However, the BBC News in Russian will still be produced from outside the country.
Access to BBC websites had already been restricted in Russia. News outlets Deutsche Welle, Meduza and Radio Liberty also had their services limited, Russia’s state-owned news agency RIA said.
Later, Canada’s public broadcaster and Bloomberg News said they too had temporarily halted reporting from Russia, and news channel CNN said it would stop broadcasting in the country. German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF also announced they were stopping their reporting from Russia – as did Italy’s Rai.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has revealed the shocking story of a 32-year-old Radio France fixer and interpreter, who was kidnapped and tortured by Russian soldiers in a village in central Ukraine. Nine days of horror that confirm the intensity of the war crimes being committed by the Russia army against journalists.
RSF further reported that “Several media crews have already come under fire and four reporters have sustained gunshot injuries in Ukraine” since
Russian invasion. The National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) confirmed that Ukrainian journalist Viktor Dedovdied on March 11 in Mariupol after his flat was bombed.
Hundreds of foreign journalists have poured into Ukraine since Russia invaded the country on February 24. Most are now concentrated in the capital of Kyiv and in the western city of Lviv, near the border with Poland. A lot of journalists haven’t experienced conflict in the former Soviet Union under Russian fire, said Carlotta Gall of The New York Times, “and I think some of them don’t quite realize how ruthless Russian forces can be.”
“Journalists under international humanitarian law are civilians and attacks on civilians are never acceptable,” said Scott Griffen, deputy director at the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI). He added that “targeted attacks on journalists in a conflict zone amount to a war crime.”
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on March 12 opened a resource center in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, near the Polish border, to support journalists in the country.
Already the center has provided personal protective equipment, including bulletproof vests and helmets, with gear provided by partners and newsrooms across Europe. “We hail the courage of journalists,” the center’s coordinator, Alexander Query, said when it opened. “With this center, we are fighting for the independence of the media in Ukraine and beyond it.”
UNESCO is supporting the efforts, providing an initial batch of 125 sets of personal protective equipment as well as training resources through the RSF center and other groups.
A Culture Of Safety (ACOS) Alliance, an international coalition of news organizations and media rights groups, has stepped up its efforts to provide Ukrainian journalists with support and guidance on safety. “Our work very much focuses on what can we do so that they don’t end up injured, kidnapped or abducted,” said Elisabet Cantenys, the group’s executive director.
Russian online media challenging Putin
The Russian media is known as a powerful propaganda machine of the government and its outlets have been closely monitored by the official agencies since several decades.
It is natural that large number of Russian journalists and editors has been turned into mere mouthpieces for the government line since Russian invasion on Ukraine too. However, what is worrying Putin is that few journalists are not showing defiance by showing that the Kremlin can’t ensure full control over Russian journalists during war period.
Mostly, Russians’ access to online information about the war constantly challenges the Kremlin’s lies about the invasion. Some Russian journalists have left the country since the end of February, while others have resigned from their jobs. Moreover, Russian efforts to spread misinformation about the invasion of Ukraine have already prompted calls for social media companies like Facebook to take a stronger approach when it comes to identifying and eliminating false or misleading posts.
Russian television news editor Marina Ovsyannikova created sensation world over by walking on the news set of state-run First Channel on March 14, 2022, and held up a sign behind the newscaster that said “no war” in English and “stop the war, don’t believe the propaganda” in Russian.
Her unprecedented protest was cut off in seconds, but it illuminated a crack in the facade of the state-aligned Russian media. A Russian court fined her US$215 for violating protest laws, and she is at further risk, having been accused of being a British spy.
Since the invasion, Russia has enacted new laws that make saying there is a “war” or “invasion” in Ukraine a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. During the first week of March alone, Russia blocked over 30 Russian and Ukrainian independent media sites.
According to a research by the Yuri Levada Analytical Center, a Moscow-based independent survey organization, shows television is a fading force in the country. While 88% of Russians used TV as their primary news source in 2013, this dropped to 62% in 2021.
During the same time period, the percentage of Russians using social media as their primary source for news rose from 14% to 37%. The difference across generations is stark: While 86% of Russians aged 55 or older were turning to television for news in 2021, only 44% of those aged 18-24 were doing the same.
New format of news tools
Ukraine conflict has shed new light on the role of the internet during armed conflicts in the digital age. “This war is being fought over information as much as it is being fought over territory,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a professor in the Department of Communication, Texas A&M University and an expert on political rhetoric and propaganda.
The transition from a highly centralized media ecosystem to a much more fragmented landscape with many different information sources has radically changed the way people receive their news about major global events, said Johanna Dunaway, associate professor of political science and an expert on political communication.
“There are many differences in the way this conflict is being seen today relative to how it would be seen during the days when most people got their news from one of three-to-five main channels,” she added.
Dunaway describes the abundance and immediacy of information related to the conflict in Ukraine as something of a double-edged sword. While it facilitates the spread of important updates on the conflict, it has also accelerated the development of diverging narratives.
As a result, she said, people “undoubtedly” are getting different versions of the story across both news coverage and social media. “At the same time, people can see and share important, dramatic and traumatic events quickly, which might encourage social action or mobilization of humanitarian aid,” she added.
One of the most significant developments on display during the conflict in Ukraine, according to history professor Jonathan Coopersmith, is the erosion of traditional barriers to mass communication.
“Before, if you wanted to send out a false video or misleading claim or even something accurate, you really had to have the resources of a state or at least a powerful actor,” said Coopersmith, who is an expert in Russian history and the history of technology. “Now, I can make a TikTok and send it out across the world.”
While today’s communication tools may be relatively new, the central role of information during periods of armed conflict is anything but. Amidst the bleak situation in Ukraine, several social media platforms are showing their solidarity to the people of Ukraine and have taken countermeasures to curb Russian activities on social media.
Social media platforms like Meta, Snapchat, Twitter have announced plans to diminish certain aspects of misuse and misinformation and restrict access to Russian content. Take a look at how major social platforms have responded to Russia-Ukraine crisis.
