Le Vrai du Faux Junior is the meeting for decrypting and verifying information with teenagers. Focus this week on the difficulties of informing about the war in Ukraine in a context of armed conflict coupled with a communication war, especially on social networks.
Matthew Mondoloni, deputy editorial director of franceinfo and Antoine Deiana, specialist in monitoring and verifying images on social networks, answer students’ questions.
Measuring the risks taken by journalists
“Do journalists in the field take risks for their lives?” asks Luna. “What precautions are journalists taking and are they entitled to a defensive weapon?“adds Plum.
“journalists in the field, replies Matthieu Mondoloni, obviously take risks since they are on a terrain of conflict”. The deputy editorial director of franceinfo points out that “there are bombings. There are shootings, explosions so they have to be very careful, they are obviously careful.
Journalists also do not have the right to a defense weapon. “That’s all that makes the difference between journalists and soldiers in the field” points Matthieu Mondoloni. “Journalists are there in a neutral, objective position to observe a conflict, to report on it”. They can be on either side of the front line, with one side or with the other side, but they must cover this conflict objectively. If a journalist had a weapon of war, he adds, “he could be even more of a target than he sometimes already is”. The precautions to be taken on the spot are therefore constantly assessed according to the evolution of the conflict and the areas affected and are in conjunction with the editorial staff in Paris.
Hence this other question from Prune: “When there is a certain level of danger can we prohibit reporters from going to the scene?
“Yes, we can ban reporters from going to the scene” answers Matthieu Mondoloni. He points to the fact that there are first of all, on the spot, soldiers, soldiers who sometimes block access to the press. Thus, a journalist from Radio France on the spot, who was to do a report in a hospital, did not have the authorization to do so. “There are toohe adds, deputy editors like me, editors who can forbid their journalists to go to certain places, when we know it’s too dangerous we tell them by phone or by message, ‘no you’re not going over there it’s too dangerous compared to the information we have here’, but afterwards we trust them, because they are the ones who are on the ground “
Work in a team by relying on the “fixers”
Colin has a question about the practical way of working in a war field:
“How do the journalists sent to Ukraine manage to gather information on the front or the advance of the Russian army at the risk of their lives?“
“They work with a fixer” answers Matthieu Mondoloni. “A fixer is both someone who will translate because the journalist does not necessarily speak Ukrainian or Russian. So he will help them to translate the different testimonies they will collect, to ask questions but the fixer is also a guide for the journalist. He is a very precious person. He knows the country in general, he comes from that country. He knows the people, the roads, the places which are the dangerous places so he will be able to help him gather this information so he will for example tell him: there the Russians are advancing towards this town, so we have to let’s move to another town.”
“The Fixer, he concludeshe’s a journalist’s best friend, it’s people who take a lot of risks. Unlike the journalist who, suddenly, at the end of his reports, leaves his country, the fixer often stays there and can risk his life.“
Weigh the risks of continuing to inform when the press is officially under surveillance
The students also have many questions about the possibility of expressing themselves and informing freely in Russia today. “Is it true that Putin has restricted press freedom in Russia? Peter asks
“It’s trueanswers Matthieu Mondoloni, that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, has limited the expression of journalists by a law which was first passed by a law in the Duma, the Russian Parliament, last week. The next day, Vladimir Putin himself signed it. “This law says that those who disseminate ‘false information about the Russian military, especially if it has serious consequences for the armed forces, are taking risks’. risk of imprisonment”.
The difficulty is to know who is concerned, only Russian journalists or also foreign journalists. “For thatspecifies the deputy editorial director of franceinfo, this law must be assessed, it may take time. We at Radio France, at this stage our correspondent Sylvain Tronchet continues to work, obviously with this notion in mind..
Check images and take a step back before sharing
In addition to the difficulties in journalistic work in the field, there is a war of images and declarations which is being played out more and more on social networks and which it is necessary to know how to decipher.
“I would like to know if it is true that there is a lot of misinformation and how journalists sort out the true from the false?” asks Anna Eva. “Chow do you get to check the images that come from Ukraine ?” adds Esteban.
It is this time Antoine Deiana of the Cell true of the false of franceinfo who answers them. He has spent his days since the beginning of the conflict checking images. “In every fieldhe explains, there’s misinformation – not necessarily orchestrated by the powers that be but also by their supporters – there’s also fake images circulating posted by people looking to get clicks, views… and that’s that’s why you have to be extra vigilant when you see images of the conflict passing by”.
Antoine Deiana explains that there are mainly two types of misleading videos at the moment: those which are manipulated, diverted and which we manage to verify because they are dated and sometimes correspond to images from another conflict, and videos of war that are actually taken from video games. There are also images that are potentially true but difficult to contextualize, to verify. “There the advicepoints the journalist, is to avoid sharing images of the conflict at this time and wait for them to be verified by serious media or journalists“.
Use reverse image search tools
When there is doubt about an image or video, the franceinfo true from false cell uses different techniques and tools to do its job of checking. First we can try to verify the source of the image we are trying to verify. Where is she from ? When was it taken? In what context ?
For this, one usually uses what is called reverse image search. On Google images, in the search bar you see a small camera that allows you to enter the image you want to check. Google then shows you all the sites where the image has appeared in the past.
This is how we were able to verify several images taken out of context during this war in Ukraine. For example, a photo where we see a man planting a Russian flag on a building in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine. Thanks to Google images, we could see that this photo was actually from 2014, so it had nothing to do with the current conflict.
We also look at the comments that accompany the shared image, because other Internet users often post answers. Finally, you can contact the people concerned by this image, such as the author of the post on social networks.