Russia Ukraine conflict: The fine line between misreporting and propaganda about Ukraine

Sadly, we are seeing exaggerations and economy with the truth in the reports on the ongoing war in Ukraine. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Cataclysmic global events have a long history of bringing out the best and the worst of news reporting. It isn’t any different today in the midst of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Much of the reporting has been brave and moving. Sadly, there’s also been news bordering on downright fabrication.

Little, it would seem, has changed since the Great Moon Hoax of August 1835 when the New York-based paper The Sun carried a series of six reports about how English astronomer Sir John Herschel, using the biggest telescope ever built, had established that there was an alien civilization on the moon. The Sun claimed that Herschel had sighted vegetation, “brown quadrupeds”, and “large winged creatures, wholly unlike any kind of birds.” The writer of the story later claimed that it was meant to be satirical but by then enough Americans had bought into the lie, and The Sun’s ensuing popularity helped the newspaper turn profitable.

Similarly in the middle of World War I in 1917, the Times and the Daily Mail in London published reports of a Kadaver factory in Germany called Kadaververwertungsanstalt. The factory, said the report quoting anonymous sources, was extracting glycerine from the corpses of the fallen from both sides of the battle lines to make soap and margarine. Horrific as the story was, it was also completely untrue. Yet to a European population convinced of Germany’s vileness, it was grist for the mill.

If it seems crazy today to imagine how people could have been so naive to have been taken in by such obvious fakery, we just have to turn to recent reports from closer home. In a moment that has passed into television history in India, one TV channel carried an elaborate analysis complete with visual clues, of how the new notes issued by the RBI after the demonetization scare had GPS chips in them.

Sadly, we are seeing the same exaggerations and economy with the truth in the reports on the ongoing war in Ukraine. Forget the Russian propaganda. Most of us are not privy to it but it is easy to imagine how full of hyperbole it must be. “Ukrainian prisoners called the Russian military tough guys”, says one piece on RIA Novosti. It goes on to elaborate “The Ukrainian prisoners expressed admiration for the actions of the Russian military and said that the command of the Kyiv troops hides losses, and buries fallen colleagues in mass graves”.

But that ham-handed propaganda is overshadowed by the far more insidious reports that some outlets in the free Western media have been putting out from time to time.

Sample this: on May 17, British tabloid The Mirror carried an intriguing story about some ex-White House adviser claiming that there was a strange smell around Vladimir Putin when she was seated next to him at a meeting between Moscow and Washington officials. The Russian politics expert said it was like the Kremlin superboss had "stepped out of a special preparatory bath". Less than a fortnight later Express, another UK-based publication, carried an even more sensational report: “Vladimir Putin 'could already be DEAD with body double taking his place' - new claims.” A variant of this was a report in The Independent: "Vladimir Putin ‘given three years to live’ and ‘is losing his eyesight due to illness’ spy claims."

So many claims. Such little evidence.

After all, this was just a month after several media outlets in the US and UK, and unfortunately in India as well, carried reports of a brave young Ukrainian pilot who had shot down 40 Russian fighter jets before going down. As it turned out, Ukrainian authorities subsequently admitted that the “Ghost of Kyiv”, as the legendary pilot was termed, was just a myth they had created to motivate their forces.

Such misreporting invokes George Orwell’s memorable words from Homage to Catalonia:

“... in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various party lines”.