What Quality Reporting on Ukraine Looks Like, and What It Doesn't
By Christopher Brennan
Last week Russian military forces invaded neighbouring Ukraine and as of this writing, are continuing to assault cities such as Kharkiv and Kyiv, the capital. Estimates of casualties vary according to different authorities, though thousands of soldiers are expected to have died and United Nations officials have said that at least 136 civilians have been killed.
In addition to the chaos of the battlefield, analysts have highlighted a new type of “fog of war” on social media, which mixes with traditional media to reach even more people. The normal dynamics of platforms incentivizing clicks and shares now mingle with state actors on different sides of the conflict trying to influence the information environment for their own ends.
Where does this leave ordinary people, who in Ukraine are deciding based on the information they receive whether to fight or leave their homes, and elsewhere are deciding whether to take in a refugee, donate to a cause, go to a protest, or contact their elected representatives? Many are left scrolling helplessly in the early hours of the morning through a flood of “content”, raw bundles of emotion and exhaustion.
While Overtone’s scores are currently for businesses, we also think that the approach they take to news can be helpful in increasing media literacy for people. This week’s newsletter shows the differences between scores, which we hope helps you better understand what you are reading as you stay up to date about Ukraine.
The different Overtone scores as a means of understanding what you are reading on Ukraine:
1s
Articles scoring a 1 on Overtone’s scale do not show the journalistic effort and news value that higher-ranking articles do. As you may imagine, this encompasses a large amount of different types of articles, so here are a several examples.
The thing that unites them all is that they are not putting in serious work to find and relay information online with context. One of the early emerging narratives of the war was the “Ghost of Kyiv,” with video shared of the pilot flying above the Ukrainian capital after supposedly downing more than five Russian fighters. The video footage was later revealed to be from a video game, and details about the pilot continue to be scarce. Before the story of the “Ghost of Kyiv” became the story of a debunk, though, this article would have still gotten a 1 out of 5 from Overtone, as it represents minimal value-add. It, like other articles, is shuffling content from social media over onto a news outlet’s side of the internet (all those linked articles received 1s).
'Ghost of Kyiv': Lone fighter pilot credited with shooting down six Russian jets - Washington Examiner
Another type of article about Ukraine that receives 1s are short briefs that don’t provide context about what they are discussing. Because Overtone does not take into account the website where the text is coming from, this means that websites that receive high scores for their in-depth reporting receive lower scores including 1s. The link from the Wall Street Journal below, which has nothing particularly *wrong* with it, is essentially just a rehashing of a press release from Philip Morris. With so many companies making announcements, coverage of Ukraine has involved a large number of organisations’ statements simply being relayed as articles (linked articles received 1s).
Philip Morris Suspends Operations in Ukraine - WSJ
2s
Articles scoring a 2 are doing a more substantive job of relaying information to readers. These articles provide some context, but with limited original reporting or information, perhaps cobbling together different statements or uncovering new information based on only one authoritative source. In other contexts such as local news, this may be an article about a crime that cites only the police.
In the context of Ukraine, this may be the repeating of information from a source such as a government or organisation. For example, The Athletic article below brings together statements from various hockey bodies such as the IIHF and Hockey Canada. The article from Fox 5, which appeared on various Fox properties including Fox News, brings together official statements from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, but adds minimal context.
Kyiv high-rise apartment building hit by missile strike - Fox 5 Atlanta
IIHF bans Russia, Belarus from tournaments 'until further notice'; Russia dropped as 2023 world junior hosts - The Athletic
3s
When the Overtone scale reaches 3 the articles are often no longer just aggregating but bringing new information or analysis to the world, even if they are covering a small part of the larger story.
One interesting example of this on the invasion of Ukraine is from Russian news agencies. I began my career in Moscow and was struck by the outsized role that wires such as Ria Novosti, Tass and Interfax play in unveiling news to the world. The best reporters in Russia are sourced within the Kremlin and its ministries, though a higher percentage of the news is broken through the wires. The example below is from Interfax, which is independent but follows the government line in calling the conflict a “military operation” rather than a full invasion (Interfax Ukraine was recently blocked in Russia). The Overtone algorithm does not check for the bias of the phrasing, but does see that Interfax is reporting information from an interview with someone from the country’s domain administrator.
Domain registrar Namecheap ends service for Russian customers over Ukraine conflict - Interfax
Threes also include articles that are bringing information from various places and helping to make sense of it. The USA Today article below has limited original reporting, but delves into studies from Human Rights Watch and the CIA to discuss thermobaric weapons.
Russia has been accused of using 'vacuum bombs' in Ukraine. What are those? - USA Today
4s
On the Overtone scale 4s are where we start to differentiate the pieces where reporters and writers put in the hard work to develop a story and explicate its meaning. In a situation such as Ukraine this may mean on the ground reporting, as seen in the AFP article, or interviews with a variety of different actors, as seen in Bloomberg. It can also involve new data that fleshes out one angle of the story. This is the case with the ABC piece below that brought in new information in the form of poll results. These pieces are not pulling together disparate pieces of the internet into one place, but going out into the world to gather information, trying to synthesise events and perspectives into a narrative that makes sense and can inform readers.
Russia strikes Ukrainian cities as convoy masses near capital - AFP
Negative views of Russia near Cold War levels amid Ukraine crisis: POLL - ABC News
BlackRock, Vanguard Grapple With Sanctions on Russian Securities - Bloomberg
5s
Articles that receive the highest score from Overtone are examples of reporters putting in the additional work to uncover their own story. There is a distinction in newsrooms between daily reporting, covering the events of the day as they happen, and enterprise reporting driven by the writer. Sometimes I view a “4” as a well-done version of a daily story, where the reporter is adding more information to give context to the event, and 5s as stories that are not necessarily as closely tied to the news cycle.
While much of the information about a war comes from official sources, with their own interests and side in the conflict, reporters doing their work out in the field can show the human side, vetting and telling the stories of people. The piece from Meduza tells the stories of Russian families who do not know where their sons, on their mandatory military service, have gone. The Latvian-based independent outlet, which covers Russia and its neighbours, analyzes the claims with the help of experts and also puts the questions to the Russian Defence Ministry.
The piece from the Times takes a narrow focus on one place and time, a night in a Kyiv children’s hospital, though not all 5s need to be long, on-the-ground features. The piece from Reuters mixes statements from officials, given anonymously, with explanations from independent analysts and debunking of the Ghost of Kyiv story above.
‘I’m panicking — where is my child?’ Conscript soldiers are being sent to fight against Ukraine, their relatives say. Here’s what their families told Meduza.- Meduza
Inside the Kyiv children’s hospital where patients fall asleep to the sound of shelling - The Times
What happened to Russia's Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped - Reuters
Excellent primer to judge the quality of a news article.