The language used to describe the war that goes on for ten months now, varies depending on the country, political sides and sympathies. Russia terms it as a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d, while Ukraine calls it an \u201cinvasion.\u201d What matters other than the words, is the story it conveys.
\nMedia.am has summed up the policy on coverage of Ukrainian war by 5 TV companies, with the terminology used, guests, sources, reliability of information.<\/p>\n
We have deliberated over the news, political and analytical programs aired by the Public TV, FreeNews, Yerkir Media, Kentron and 5th Channel TV companies. Time wise, the first ten days and three significant events \u2013 the Mariupol maternity and children hospital air strike, the Bucha massacre and Vinnytsia missile strikes have been reviewed.<\/p>\n
Despite that Public TV News report mainly presented two-sided information retrieved from mostly official sources, yet it kept true to the Russian wording of calling it a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d or \u201cspecial operation.\u201d Out of 17 reports at least 8 used this wording as an indirect quote. Our efforts to find the newscast of March 4 and 5 \u201cNews\u201d went amiss.<\/p>\n
The first days of the war made practically all the central headlines of the news reports. They have also addressed the anti-Russian moods in Azerbaijan, Turkey\u2019s behavior, war\u2019s economic repercussions, etc., against the backdrop of war.<\/p>\n
As for the three keynote events brought up above, the main \u201cNews\u201d coverage was silent about the air strike of Mariupol maternity and children\u2019s hospital. The massacre of Bucha was covered <\/a>only after Russia\u2019s response calling it a \u201cprovocation and fake news attack.\u201d Whereas the news on Vinnytsia was covered <\/a>in international newscast featuring a two-sided official opinion.<\/p>\n In connection with other programs, the general<\/a> and economic<\/a> impact of war has been addressed in the scope of \u201cPublic discussion\u201d. <\/p>\n The series \u201cInterview\u201d authored Petros Ghazharyan is quite noteworthy in that in early days of war it hosted Russian officials \u2013 Konstantin Zatunil<\/a> and Vitaly Milonov, <\/a>Deputies of the Russian State Duma, as well as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Armenia Sergey Kopirkin.<\/a> Additionally, all these interviews had been broadcast in Russian instituting an infringement of the Armenian legislation.<\/a><\/p>\n During the main news coverage of \u201cFree News\u201d, Russian military operations were characterized as \u201cinvasion\u201d for several times; moreover, they kept avoiding the Russian wording. By making certain highlights, the TV channel clearly accentuated its critical disposition towards the actions of West. For instance, the coverage of the war\u2019s first day accounts:<\/a> \u201cWestern countries come up with pedestrian, futile declarations\u201d (20:45 min). <\/p>\n \u201cFreeNews\u201d primarily offers two-pronged official information. They interview Armenians living in Ukraine, reflect on the work abroad and other topics.<\/p>\n Regarding the topics we identified, they addressed the airstrike of Mariupol in a biased, one short sentence<\/a>: \u201c\u2026the Russian side tags the airstrike as a provocation to blame Russia in war crimes further.\u201d In the case of Bucha, they reported a double-sided official information with obsolete<\/a> data on the number of victims and wounded in Vinnytsia.<\/p>\n As for other coverages, the author of the program \u201cFree interaction\u201d Gnel Sargsyan used <\/a>the war of Ukraine for political reasons. For instance, he juxtaposed two different developments, asking: \u201cWhen Russia acknowledged the independence of Donbas and Lugansk, did anyone call Zelensky a \u201cland-giver\u201d or anything closer?\u201d<\/p>\n The series of interviews lent a platform to speakers with both pro-western and pro-Russian views, where the latter prevailed. In one of the programs, the Foreign Affairs Minister of Artsakh Davit Babayan circulated <\/a>the Russian propaganda about \u201cboth Ukrainians and Russians being one common nation\u201d, whereas Eduard Antinyan, politician, declared<\/a>: \u201cThey orchestrated this war on Russia\u2019s head.\u201d Within the period under scrutiny they had provided a platform <\/a>to the Deputy of the State Duma Vitaly Milonov.<\/p>\n To describe the Ukrainian war, \u201cYerkirn Aysor (The Country Today)\u201d program used the Russian phraseology and words \u201cwar\u201d, \u201cconfrontation.\u201d They spoke to the representatives of the Armenians\u2019 Union of Ukraine on the situation there and the Armenian community most frequently. However, sometimes they overlooked the reporter\u2019s background: at least twice they showed Putin while they spoke about Zelensky, in February 25<\/a> and February 28<\/a>. <\/p>\n Yerkir Media has also addressed <\/a>the information war with an opening remark from the journalist that \u201cduring war any weapon is good both in the battlefield or information frontline.\u201d<\/p>\n For Mariupol, they have disseminated biased information: <\/a>\u201c\u2026 The Minister of Foreign Affairs of RF called it manipulative and false, claiming that the area has long been used as the base of Azov Battalion.\u201d In the footage on Bucha massacre, they referred<\/a> to the visual investigation<\/a> conducted by the American NYTimes. The editorial office used the satellite imagery to prove that in defiance of Russian assertions, the dead bodies were in the streets before the Russian troops withdrew from Bucha. No coverage on Vinnytsia was found.<\/p>\n The interview series \u201cCountry\u2019s Guest Room\u201d touched upon the topic of war for several times. In his question addressed to the guest of one of those programs, the TV host maintained<\/a> the disinformation about Russia\u2019s dismissal from the Council of Europe spread widely <\/a>in the media, whereas the reality was that the Council of Europe had only suspended Russia\u2019s rights of representation at the time of being. <\/p>\n The video materials of \u201cEpicenter\u201d main news program posted on the internet often lacks all or some of the news announced in the news brief. What’s more, traces of editing <\/a>catch one\u2019s eye. This does not allow to get a clear understanding of the TV company\u2019s policy on news coverage. <\/p>\n Interestingly, against the backdrop of Russian-Ukrainian war, Kentron TV company publishes a footage<\/a> in March 5 release about \u201cGenius Commanders\u201d of Armenian descent, who occupy key positions across \u201copposite sides of barricade\u201d \u2013 in the RF Armed Forces and NATO.<\/p>\n With no coverage on the topics of Mariupol and Vinnytsia, in March 9 they broadcast<\/a> the agitating comment of Vitaly Milonov, Deputy of the RF State Duma, referring to the reported mobilization of forces in the Ukrainian schools turning people into live shields. Bucha mass killings were reported in the announcement <\/a>and went unmentioned in the news release itself. <\/p>\n A number of political-analytical programs broadcast by Kentron TV are hosted by former deputies of \u201cProsperous Armenia\u201d fraction. They disseminate Russian propaganda during these programs. For example, during one of the programs called \u201c30 minutes with Mikayel Melkumyan\u201d, the host Melkumyan circulated the Russian narrative <\/a>on allegedly turning Ukrainian population into a human shield. In addition, the hosts of \u201cPress Kentron (meaning Center)\u201d Shake Isayan and Arman Abovyan talk about<\/a> biological weapon and spread <\/a>pro-Russian narratives.<\/p>\n \u201cHaylur\u201d offers the most extensive coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war; in the first days particularly, more than half of the newscast focused on this very topic. The war was labeled in various forms: \u201crepeatedly protracted war\u201d, \u201cinvasion\u201d, and the provision of weapon by the EU to Ukraine \u2013 \u201cextreme measure.\u201d We failed to find the news coverages aired on Febriary 25 and 27.<\/p>\n \u201cHaylur\u201d is the most diverse in terms of information sources. On top of the official sources, they used the content of RT, RIA Novosti, CNN, in addition to the materials of Semyon Pegov from WarGonzo, and a trove of other Telegram channels. They had contacted Armenians living not only in Ukraine, but also in Donetsk. <\/p>\n Having said that, not always has the information been checked, instead it was compensated with the phrases \u201caccording to unconfirmed report\u201d, \u201creportedly\u201d and similar words. For instance, in the face of the account that \u201cAll those venturing out in the curfew imposed in Kyiv, will be considered members of sabotage groups of the enemy\u201d, they reported <\/a>that \u201cAccording to unconfirmed report, five members of a family have been shot in Kyiv\u2026\u201d As a matter of fact, the incident took place <\/a>in the outskirts of Kherson rather than in Kyiv. <\/p>\n In certain cases, \u201cHaylur\u201d misrepresents the content taken from another source. One example is the report of 5th<\/sup> Channel on Sky News crew finding themselves under heavy gunfire, where an impression was made <\/a>that either it was the Ukrainians or at least it was unclear who had been shooting. Conversely, the footage and the description below clearly indicated<\/a> the crew\u2019s claims on the fire gunned by the Russian forces. <\/p>\n The events of Mariupol were reported<\/a> only the next day after the emergence of Russia\u2019s response. In the case of Bucha, this is the second TV company to cover<\/a> the investigation of NYTimes, in addition to the official news feed. In the meanwhile, the data published on Vinnytsia air strike turned out to be out of date.<\/a><\/p>\n In the case of other programs, the attitude of guests hosted by 5th<\/sup> Channel to democracy leaves us wanting more. Thus, Vardan Voskanyan, an expert in Iranian studies, considers<\/a> that \u201cdemocracy has long become a one-of-a-kind religious system used as a tool to spread political flares.\u201d And speaking at the \u201cDiary\u201d TV program, political psychologist Mihran Madatyan declared <\/a>that \u201cRussia is making efforts to oust from the region the pseudo-democratic neo-fascism implanted by the west into the region over time.\u201d<\/p>\n Arshaluis Barseghyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The language used to describe the war that goes on for ten months now, varies depending on the country, political sides and sympathies. Russia terms it as a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d, while Ukraine calls it an \u201cinvasion.\u201d What matters other than the words, is the story it conveys. Media.am has summed up the policy on Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-verified","author_posts-arshaluys-barseghyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35029"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35031,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35029\/revisions\/35031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The word \u201cinvasion\u201d most frequently used by FreeNews<\/h2>\n
Yerkir Media: \u201cAt war, all weapons are good, be it in the battlefield or information frontline\u201d<\/h2>\n
Kentron. announced news gone missing <\/h2>\n
5th Channel spreads unchecked information enveloped as \u201creported\u201d <\/h2>\n