USA Today’s admission exploited for anti-Western propaganda

Freepik/@ user17605885

Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 12/07/2022

Since the beginning of the Russian Federation’s military invasion of Ukraine, we have been seeing that the pro-Russian media tend to characterize the war-related articles published by the Western media as part of the anti-Kremlin campaign, in a desperate attempt to ferret out any elements of fake news.

In most cases, their attempts were unsuccessful, because the relevant Western media were, for the most part, publishing accurate and precise reports about the war-affected areas.

However, it is possible for fake news to be coming from relevant addresses, as was confirmed in the case of the well-known newspaper USA Today, which released an article informing the public that an internal audit into the reporting work of one of their journalists revealed that some individuals quoted were affiliated with organizations that turned out to be non-existent. Twenty-three of her articles were removed after it was established that the quotes contained therein were incorrect, unverifiable, and in some cases attributed to the wrong persons. Of the 23 removed texts, two pertain to the war in Ukraine.

“After receiving an external correction request, USA TODAY audited the reporting work of Gabriela Miranda. The audit revealed that some individuals quoted were not affiliated with the organizations claimed and appeared to be fabricated. The existence of other individuals quoted could not be independently verified. In addition, some stories included quotes that should have been credited to others,“ the statement reads.

The pro-Russian web portal IN4S was quick to swoop down on the statement published by USA Today, utilizing for the umpteenth time their well-known narrative to point to the alleged Western propaganda against Russia.

“USA TODAY admitted that their reporter was spreading fake news from Ukraine: Does the West care for the truth!?” reads the headline by IN4S.

The article draws attention to the fact that journalist Gabriela Miranda published fabricated quotes in her article on the dangers of possible hazards during the seizure of a nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

“It is indicative that, at one point, the threat of nuclear reactor hazards became a “scarecrow” widely used by the Western media to demonize Russia and cause “neurosis” among the European public. Of course, no one seemed to be bothered about the fact that one of the articles on this topic got exposed a few months later, as the “factory of lies” is already on a roll for a while and has generated many such “products”, the IN4S article says, among other things.

Although the USA Today journalist’s article was unequivocally found as containing elements of fake news, the nuclear hazard risk was real, despite IN4S’s claims that such allegations served to “inflame the European public’s neuroses”.

Namely, in March, the non-profit global environmental organization – Greenpeace, published an analysis of nuclear power plant hazards in Zaporizhzhia, which was seized by Russian troops at the time.

“Vladimir Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine poses an unprecedented nuclear threat, with the country’s 15 commercial nuclear reactors, including the largest nuclear plant in Europe, at risk of potentially catastrophic damage that could render vast areas of the European continent, including Russia, uninhabitable for decades, new analysis shows. In the case of an accidental bombing and certainly in case of a deliberate attack, the consequences could be catastrophic, well beyond the impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Because of the vulnerability of the nuclear power plants, their dependency on a complex set of support systems, and the long period of time it takes to bring the power plant to a more passive safety level, the only way to substantially reduce the risks is to halt the war,“ the Greenpeace analysis reads. 

In addition, in March, Nature portal also published an article on this topic, quoting numerous scientists as highlighting the possible dangers of warfare around nuclear sites in Zaporizhzhia.

The IN4S article goes on to claim that the Western media have been spreading “mass rape fabrications”, adding that these stories can no longer be stopped.

“Not even after this information was identified as false. No one will remove and refute the articles claiming that ‘in Russia, rapists are being raised from preschool age’. In a fierce information war, many people have no interest in the truth,” says the IN4S article, although USA Today’s contested author made no such references whatsoever.

Despite what IN4S claims, there is no evidence to suggest that the articles on Ukrainian war rape victims are untruthful.

As a matter of fact, there are numerous articles published by some of the world’s most famous media that draw attention to the increased number of rape cases.

“A report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), released on April 13, found violations of international humanitarian law by Russian forces in Ukraine, noting that ‘reports indicate instances of conflict-related gender-based violence, such as rape, sexual violence or sexual harassment’”, according to an article by CNN.

British daily paper the Guardian also wrote about this topic, while the BBC published an article on a shocking testimony by a Ukrainian woman, a rape victim whose husband was killed.

These reports as well as those by numerous other media and international organizations unequivocally confirm the fact that many Ukrainian women were victims of sexual violence by Russian soldiers.

Therefore, it is true that USA Today’s journalists published articles that contained incorrect information, and indeed two of those covered Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. However, the disputed articles bear no mention of points that IN4S made reference to, and using the said articles as proof of Western propaganda is an obvious manipulation by IN4S, even more so since the USA Today editorial staff audited the articles, and found them to be containing incorrect information, and removed them.

Due to all of the above, we label this article by IN4S as fact manipulation.

The “Fact manipulation” label is assigned to media reports that contain well-established and accurate facts but interpret them in a misleading way. These reports generally use accurate information to draw incorrect conclusions or claims, thus swaying consumers of media content to make wrong conclusions, leading them astray from the actual meaning of the facts presented.