7 ms·

I live in Ukraine. From 2015 till 2022 I didn’t read or watched news and no social media or blogs or analytics. Then war started. Now I follow news everyday, be

• SanjayMehta 4y ago
  What sources of news are reliable on the conflict? I can't find anything which doesn't reek of propaganda: Western or Russian.
  • syrkis 4y ago
    I use understandingwar.org. to me it does not seem like western propaganda, but rather an attempt to convey accurate information. But then again, to me mainstream news (which I stay away from) seems sensationalistic, not propagandistic.
    • _nalply 4y ago
      Sensationalistic because of their need to sell attention. Especially rage is profitable. In other words, the agenda of news is to earn money with advertisement and not giving useful information.
    • cloverich 4y ago
      Understandingwar has been great, daily updates throuought war. Many other news outlets either recycle or use the same source material; i rarely learn anything new from any other source. Note they avoid detailing ukrainian movements unless confirmed as known by Russian sources, i assume to avoid being a source of Russian intel. That context helps to explain the reporting style, where Ukrainian intel is always reported from confirmed Russian sources, ie stuff Russians are guaranteed to already know. In practice it means there is usually a delay before knowing the latest status of Ukrainian offensive strategy.
  • sofixa 4y ago
    Oryx (blog and Twitter) provides good raw open source intelligence data. I've found The Guardian's reporting and FT's analysis to be quite good. They report based on verifiable facts and also claims by both sides, with explicit mentions if there's corroborating sources or not. The Guardian also have a daily "what's new" so that's useful to keep up.
    • jemmyw 4y ago
      I read the guardian but it's pretty biased l and sometimes the reporting is terrible. It tends to align with my views but it's still super flawed. Recently I've also been reading dw.com Deutsche Welle. They are more straight factual and of course biased to German related news which is interesting.
      • sofixa 4y ago
        > I read the guardian but it's pretty biased l and sometimes the reporting is terrible Do you have any specific examples? I can't say that it mirrors my experience but i might have missed something.
        • jemmyw 4y ago
          I don't keep a record of the articles that have made me roll my eyes. Usually it's when they report on an area I know a little about, like New Zealand or tech news, and I think "wait, that's not entirely true" or "that's not what people actually think about this subject" and it makes me think if I feel that way about those articles then that reduces the credibility of all articles by a small amount. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/ has some information and examples.
          • SanjayMehta 4y ago
            Interesting. There's an upcoming Indian channel (WION) which seems to get good marks from this group. However, most Indian journalists call them "right wing." https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/wion-world-one-news/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/wion-world-one-news/
  • yackback 4y ago
    Bellingcat
  • karaokeyoga 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_(website)
  • oezi 4y ago
    This seems to be a core problem of a lot of people. The inability to discern that not everything has an agenda and is propaganda. Most western media (Murdock/Berlusconi type oligarch media aside) is fairly factual. It doesn't have 'spin' or 'agenda' in the sense that the journalists conspire to mislead (they don't have time for this).
    • smeagull 4y ago
      Are you high? Murdoch has a massive agenda. They have persistently chosen governments to favour in multiple countries. Honestly just have a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch
    • Beldin 4y ago
      In my experience, most news nowadays has an agenda: selling itself. Newspapers and the main tv news have become far more clickbaity and far less informative. These used to be fairly decent sources of news; nowadays, you'll learn what some folks in your country are shouting on twitter, how b-rank celebrities are messing up their lives, and what's happening in the nation and in the US. Perhaps 2-3 tidbits of big international news. You'll have next to no clue what's happening in middle nor South America, Africa, China, India, the rest of Asia, or the Arab peninsula. In short: a lot of news nowadays has the agenda of selling itself and takes time to select stories and spin headlines for this. It has become genuinely harder to stay reasonably informed about what's going on in the world.
      • mdp2021 4y ago
        Freer circulation of information has caused a funding crisis for costly enterprises like investigative journalism, but on the other hand, there /is/ a «freer circulation of information». It now has to be managed - the scenario is more complex.
    • SanjayMehta 4y ago
      Well, for months Russia has been losing, and yet they have taken over what, 20% of Ukraine's territory and today I heard The Telegraph say that they have knocked out 40% of Ukraine's energy system. So pardon me for being confused.
  • ordu 4y ago
    In general case it is impossible to report news objectively. I personally do not mind propaganda per se anymore. I mean it is ok with me, if the source has a political agenda. I praise media who state their agenda clearly. But what I do not tolerate is the outright lying. I do not like hidden agenda, though it can be revealed by watching a source for some time. Moreover propaganda-phobia is bad by itself. It can be a tool of a propaganda.
    • 6t6t6t6 4y ago
      The problem is when you are using propaganda as the source of information that the life of your family depends on.
    • raxxorraxor 4y ago
      I disagree profoundly. I can do good work which will still never be perfect. Doesn't mean I don't try to do a good job. Without objectivity, what does a news story have left? Amounts of clicks? Granted, that is the current economic reality of news writers. To teach and inform someone means to broaden their perspective. Without a goal like objectivity, a news story has no value. Why even listen to propaganda, it would not be to your benefit? I still do like opinion pieces where authors describe their experience because sometimes an objective recapitulation does indeed not tell the whole story. But many modern news articles could use a dosage of detachment. It would improve the craft drastically.
      • ordu 4y ago
        It is sounds good, but I know not a single media that manage to maintain unbiased objective style. They are all present a biased sample of data, reporting what they think is important and rejecting everything else. A biased sample is the best you can get. For this sample to be useful, a reader needs to know what biases the source have. If readers believe that the sample is objective and do not keep their own subjective opinion on how this sample is biased (or which other deficiencies the source has), they just make it easier to others to manipulate their opinions. I do not believe that anyone can be objective, because the process of selecting data to publication is a subjective process. > many modern news articles could use a dosage of detachment. It would improve the craft drastically. Maybe it would. But I'm reading news not to improve craft, but to keep myself informed. So I read what there is, not what it would be nice to have. Moreover I believe that if you deem your sources are flawed, it make you better at critical thinking. Or rather it could make you better, if you didn't just turn to "post-truth", but tried to measure flaws and to undo them. So maybe to impove craft of reporting and make it perfect, is not a good thing. It would mean that you no longer can author your own opinion, you can not practice the art, and you are extremely vulnerable to a manipulation. Though maybe if craft was perfected then it wouldn't be an issue?
  • culi 4y ago
    You're probably being downvoted because of the mere suggestion that Western propaganda is shaping the narrative but this is something that also irks me. I do not defend at all any of Russia's actions but the fact that it's just become commonly accepted that the war happened because "PuTiN iS cRaZyyy" is kinda scary. Absolutely no mention of the US' role in this or the fact that NATO specifically sent Boris to stop the peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that would've prevented this or that Biden has been very explicit about a foreign policy to "weaken Russia" since taking office. The complete lack of geopolitical and historical context in the media around this event has really shaken my trust. In the future I'll probably just be heading directly to the history books rather than trying to parse out the missing context from the media
    • stareatgoats 4y ago
      In war you're either for us or against us. No gray zones, no "love thy enemy", no nuance or fair analysis even. It is a social psychological mechanism, because if you try to distribute blame on both sides you are potentially aiding the enemy, resulting in potentially greater losses on your own side (i.e. your neighbor might die). It has little to do with the quality of the news, more with the psychosocial mechanisms of any polarized conflict that involves life and death. One may lament it, but only from the outside and at some distance. As a side note one might wonder if this is not a main purpose of war: to create a polarized environment where dissent becomes impossible.
    • fractallyte 4y ago
      The war started in 2014, following the Euromaidan protests, and the Russian invasion of Crimea. Putin isn't crazy - he's coldly calculating, and clearly demonstrated his ruthlessness in Chechnya (which the world chose to ignore).
      • cudgy 4y ago
        “Crimea's election committee said that 97% of voters backed a union between the largely ethnic-Russian peninsula and the huge neighboring country.” “Residents of Crimea, up to 60% percent of whom are Russian, were given a choice of either joining Russia or opting for more autonomy from Ukraine under the 1992 constitution.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/16/crimea-referendum-ukraine-russia/6484251/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/16/crimea-...
  • sigil 4y ago
    The War on the Rocks podcast is good, in particular the regular analysis from Michael Kofman. https://open.spotify.com/show/5ec5TBvVh3w4aobgx0qgYj https://open.spotify.com/show/5ec5TBvVh3w4aobgx0qgYj The Institute for the Study of War aggregates open source intel into daily control of terrain maps. https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar
    • SanjayMehta 4y ago
      Listening to their latest podcast right now. They definitely have a much more neutral tone than the others I've checked out. Thanks.
  • koonsolo 4y ago
    Western media is not controlled by the goverment, so they are free to report on anything they want. I saw them interview pro-russian people in those regions right in the battle areas. On YouTube I follow Denys Davydov, a Ukrainian pilot that reports about the war. A few days ago he showed a video of a Ukrainian helicopter flying close over traffic, and he was critiquing how irresponsibly and dangerous that was. He claims to know that road and that is was far from the battlefield. So even him as a Ukrainian is able to try and be as objective as possible. News can be objective. The claim that western media is full of propaganda is just kremlin propaganda.
    • SanjayMehta 4y ago
      > The claim that western media is full of propaganda is just kremlin propaganda. This made me chuckle.
      • koonsolo 4y ago
        You have to ask this question: How is the government controlling the media? In Russia's case, it's pretty clear. They have laws to prohibit free press, jail time for claiming things opposite to the Kremlin. In some other cases, it's more subtle. In Hungary, Orban's influence on the media is very high, and not healthy for a democracy. But if you claim that the most objective news sources in the west still show straight-up propaganda, I would love to see some evidence of that. Any evidence, like a journalist that is fired over going against a government. Or laws, or some other influence from the government straight to media companies.
        • cudgy 4y ago
          You are only focusing on government punishing journalists and journalists complying due to fear. This ignores journalists being lazy by accepting and printing leaked stories from government as truth without any verification. Another example is not reporting on topics due to fear of losing their job or social status because it goes against a popular narrative.
          • 4y ago
  • orwin 4y ago
    I mean, my mother hosted georgians refugees when i was still in highschool, so i have talked to them (at least tried to, we all had broken english). To be honest, i have no problem at all believing the propaganda talking about rapes (including those targeting young kids, which aren't talked about in MSMs) and massacres from the Russian army. I know i'm biased, but first, this is a belief i held in my formative years (that the Russian army was full of violent pigs), and it seems to align the the propaganda i'm seeing now. So perhaps there is some exageration right now, perhaps there was some exagerations 15 years ago, but to me it aligns perfectly. I also know two ex-special force guys, one who worked in Africa against Wagner, and while Wagner seems to be less rape-happy than the average Russian military guy, massacring and trying to put it on their opponent is their MO. I think i can say it now because Wagner was recently caught and will be more carefull next time, but the French army decided to keep satellite + air surveillance over all their old bases and now put bodycams and surveillance on all sites that can be used to frame them.
• belter 4y ago
  Stay safe. All the best for you and your family. Slava Ukraini!