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> don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia is not advancing, yada yada

> don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia is not advancing, yada yada" meanwhile the graphic they showed while saying this clearly showed a map with more occupied territory than the same map the day before and another city under siege which has deteriorated my trust where I was a skeptic before, I did at least think war reporting would be rather accurate. I really got the feeling they were trying to calm us down and getting those talking points from some unified source (the govt?) and worries me that this conflict does in fact have potential to get massively out of hand

ghayes 5y ago
Maps of territory are a terrible way to show the state of the war. This article provides some color and might help underscore why the narrative could be correct even if the maps look otherwise: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/07/russia-war-ukraine-maps/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/07/russia-war-ukraine-maps...
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  Maps of territory are a terrible way of showing ANY political conflict. It's the same as the maps of county-by-county US election results that show a sea of red that equate to a population smaller than LA county. People are the important unit in political conflicts and Russia is very much struggling to take any meaningfully populated area (See: Chernobyl, a place where sane humans refuse to go, being one of the first trophies)
  - mcguire 5y ago
    See https://purplestatesofamerica.org/ https://purplestatesofamerica.org/ (Click on "Population".) And here's an interesting take: https://medium.com/matter/the-trouble-with-the-purple-election-map-31e6cb9f1827 https://medium.com/matter/the-trouble-with-the-purple-electi...
  - conductr 5y ago
    I fully agree but it's my go to when my level of time investment is very low. First few weeks I was checking in maybe 5 minutes a day for the headlines, saw no real ground footage and only the maps and cities under siege. The next couple weeks I checked in less frequently but began seeing more imagery of the destruction/human toll. As of now, I haven't looked at any news on the topic this week at all.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  The article you linked to disagrees: "Maps, after all, remain crucial for our understanding of conflicts. Even if they are abstractions, they remain immensely useful." Maps should not be treated as simple visualizations. They can (and should) contain plenty of information, and interpreting them properly often takes a lot of skill and effort.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
itsoktocry 5y ago
>I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia is not advancing, yada yada" Same here. I consider myself a big consumer of news from a variety of sources, and it's hard to get nearly any perspective except "Ukraine is dominating the battlefield". It's strange times, but this is the information war.
- dash2 5y ago
  Have you considered the possibility that if everything says one thing, that's because it is true? Maybe the Russians genuinely haven't done very well. I think there are too many Cartesians sitting in front of their screens going "perhaps an evil demon is trying to fool me about everything!"
  - pueblito 5y ago
    I think there is a natural instinct to not believe things that are obviously propaganda, so when confronted by a party telling an obvious fantasy it’s pretty important to get the other party’s version, even if also nonsense and hope to suss out the truth.
    - notahacker 5y ago
      You don't have to look very hard for the other side's version though. Question is whether you think "Russia made a planned withdrawal from the north of the country after completing all the objectives of this military exercise which definitely isn't a war" is a more plausible description of the short-lived invasion of the north of the country than "Russia's advances have slowed down... Russia stopped advancing... Russia is retreating...". Both narratives agree that the facts on the ground are that Russian troops made large scale incursions into the north of Ukraine but aren't there any more. Yes, most Western media has sought to emphasize Russian casualties over Ukrainian ones and Ukrainian minor success over Russian ones, but it's not like Western media hasn't been free to predict Russia will have full control of Mariupol in a couple of days for over a month now and talk up the Russian convoy advancing on Kyiv which never made it there, or like the official Russian narrative isn't palpably absurd.
matthewdgreen 5y ago
The reporting on the war has been fairly consistent: that Russia initially captured a lot of territory in a rapid advance, but overextended themselves and bogged down. Now they're retreating from much of this territory and are trying to reinforce their forces in Donbas. That narrative seems to be well-supported by reporting, and it also perfectly explains what you observed. Don't think anyone is misleading you.
- dustymcp 5y ago
  This is also what i have gathered, ive used mostly youtube and r/ukraine to get some views, i do realize they are highly skewed to ukranian side of the conflict, but i prefer it that way, the aggression is absolutely started by Russia so i have no sympathy for them.
  - fhood 5y ago
    Healthy skepticism is important, but I have so far been amazed at how much of the information circulated by the Ukrainian govt has ended up being independently validated. Much of what ends up on reddit is nonsense, but I have begun to trust the govt reports, as so far they seem to be less a distorted picture and more an up to date one.
    - lobocinza 5y ago
      It's amazing that someone can be better informed by purely reading Ukrainian official propaganda than by reading independent news agencies like Reuters. The first has incentives to not lie as to not lose international support while the latter for the sake of being impartial while being unable to verify what's really going on has to take Russian propaganda (which is vastly misinformation) at face value.
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
        For the same reason it’s really easy to get a good idea of where Russia has been attacking, advancing, or retreating throughout the whole deal by simply monitoring the Ukraine propaganda telegram channel. They want to highlight any atrocities committed by Russia to the West on full blast so we get to hear about every missile in every town almost immediately after it happens.
jrumbut 5y ago
> I did at least think war reporting would be rather accurate. I can't imagine why. There are massive disinformation campaigns and only a psychopath could be an impartial observer while watching two sides kill each other. The "fog of war" is hard to penetrate for anyone, from reporters to combatants.
- conductr 5y ago
  Maybe accurate is the wrong word, but consistent based on the information available even if disinformation. I didn't expect the new to be the source of the disinformation in regards to war. It also seemed to me to take a very long time to get any real footage of what was going on, war correspondents and so on. I recall with the early days of Iraq and the Baghdad invasion that I felt like I was getting the full picture. Perhaps because it was US forces with journalists in tow. The reason we were there was highly questionable and suspicious but I felt like I was getting a rather accurate picture of what happened on the ground. I say all this but should also mention that my perception could also be significantly off. I am not a regular consumer of news and this just happens to be what I'd see when I decided to get a quick update on the situation.
heavyset_go 5y ago
I can't remember a time in my life when war reporting was accurate. I do find it interesting, though, that the media is willing to show the civilian casualties of this war, when there was a practical media blackout on the same type of reporting of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
- einarfd 5y ago
  That's not surprising at all. American forces had a very bad experience with reporters that reported damning stories about them in Vietnam. In Iraq and Afghanistan they took actions to make that kind of reporting hard, and the reporting they wanted easy. It wasn't even that secret and I'm fairly sure I at least saw some reporting on that they where doing this in Norwegian, and possibly British media.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  There is a lot of OSINT now, given that the war theatre is located in a developed country with network coverage and a dozen million smartphones. From this point of view, accuracy is probably better than in previous wars. We didn't have much OSINT from Hindu Kush.
samsolomon 5y ago
For what it’s worth the Institute for the Study of War has been putting out excellent, unbiased analysis about the war since day one. https://understandingwar.org/ https://understandingwar.org/

ghayes 5y ago

Maps of territory are a terrible way to show the state of the war. This article provides some color and might help underscore why the narrative could be correct even if the maps look otherwise: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/07/russia-war-ukraine-maps/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/07/russia-war-ukraine-maps...

RC_ITR 5y ago
Maps of territory are a terrible way of showing ANY political conflict. It's the same as the maps of county-by-county US election results that show a sea of red that equate to a population smaller than LA county. People are the important unit in political conflicts and Russia is very much struggling to take any meaningfully populated area (See: Chernobyl, a place where sane humans refuse to go, being one of the first trophies)
- mcguire 5y ago
  See https://purplestatesofamerica.org/ https://purplestatesofamerica.org/ (Click on "Population".) And here's an interesting take: https://medium.com/matter/the-trouble-with-the-purple-election-map-31e6cb9f1827 https://medium.com/matter/the-trouble-with-the-purple-electi...
- conductr 5y ago
  I fully agree but it's my go to when my level of time investment is very low. First few weeks I was checking in maybe 5 minutes a day for the headlines, saw no real ground footage and only the maps and cities under siege. The next couple weeks I checked in less frequently but began seeing more imagery of the destruction/human toll. As of now, I haven't looked at any news on the topic this week at all.
jltsiren 5y ago
The article you linked to disagrees: "Maps, after all, remain crucial for our understanding of conflicts. Even if they are abstractions, they remain immensely useful." Maps should not be treated as simple visualizations. They can (and should) contain plenty of information, and interpreting them properly often takes a lot of skill and effort.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

itsoktocry 5y ago

>I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia is not advancing, yada yada" Same here. I consider myself a big consumer of news from a variety of sources, and it's hard to get nearly any perspective except "Ukraine is dominating the battlefield". It's strange times, but this is the information war.

dash2 5y ago
Have you considered the possibility that if everything says one thing, that's because it is true? Maybe the Russians genuinely haven't done very well. I think there are too many Cartesians sitting in front of their screens going "perhaps an evil demon is trying to fool me about everything!"
- pueblito 5y ago
  I think there is a natural instinct to not believe things that are obviously propaganda, so when confronted by a party telling an obvious fantasy it’s pretty important to get the other party’s version, even if also nonsense and hope to suss out the truth.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    You don't have to look very hard for the other side's version though. Question is whether you think "Russia made a planned withdrawal from the north of the country after completing all the objectives of this military exercise which definitely isn't a war" is a more plausible description of the short-lived invasion of the north of the country than "Russia's advances have slowed down... Russia stopped advancing... Russia is retreating...". Both narratives agree that the facts on the ground are that Russian troops made large scale incursions into the north of Ukraine but aren't there any more. Yes, most Western media has sought to emphasize Russian casualties over Ukrainian ones and Ukrainian minor success over Russian ones, but it's not like Western media hasn't been free to predict Russia will have full control of Mariupol in a couple of days for over a month now and talk up the Russian convoy advancing on Kyiv which never made it there, or like the official Russian narrative isn't palpably absurd.

matthewdgreen 5y ago

The reporting on the war has been fairly consistent: that Russia initially captured a lot of territory in a rapid advance, but overextended themselves and bogged down. Now they're retreating from much of this territory and are trying to reinforce their forces in Donbas. That narrative seems to be well-supported by reporting, and it also perfectly explains what you observed. Don't think anyone is misleading you.

dustymcp 5y ago
This is also what i have gathered, ive used mostly youtube and r/ukraine to get some views, i do realize they are highly skewed to ukranian side of the conflict, but i prefer it that way, the aggression is absolutely started by Russia so i have no sympathy for them.
- fhood 5y ago
  Healthy skepticism is important, but I have so far been amazed at how much of the information circulated by the Ukrainian govt has ended up being independently validated. Much of what ends up on reddit is nonsense, but I have begun to trust the govt reports, as so far they seem to be less a distorted picture and more an up to date one.
  - lobocinza 5y ago
    It's amazing that someone can be better informed by purely reading Ukrainian official propaganda than by reading independent news agencies like Reuters. The first has incentives to not lie as to not lose international support while the latter for the sake of being impartial while being unable to verify what's really going on has to take Russian propaganda (which is vastly misinformation) at face value.
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
      For the same reason it’s really easy to get a good idea of where Russia has been attacking, advancing, or retreating throughout the whole deal by simply monitoring the Ukraine propaganda telegram channel. They want to highlight any atrocities committed by Russia to the West on full blast so we get to hear about every missile in every town almost immediately after it happens.

jrumbut 5y ago

> I did at least think war reporting would be rather accurate. I can't imagine why. There are massive disinformation campaigns and only a psychopath could be an impartial observer while watching two sides kill each other. The "fog of war" is hard to penetrate for anyone, from reporters to combatants.

conductr 5y ago
Maybe accurate is the wrong word, but consistent based on the information available even if disinformation. I didn't expect the new to be the source of the disinformation in regards to war. It also seemed to me to take a very long time to get any real footage of what was going on, war correspondents and so on. I recall with the early days of Iraq and the Baghdad invasion that I felt like I was getting the full picture. Perhaps because it was US forces with journalists in tow. The reason we were there was highly questionable and suspicious but I felt like I was getting a rather accurate picture of what happened on the ground. I say all this but should also mention that my perception could also be significantly off. I am not a regular consumer of news and this just happens to be what I'd see when I decided to get a quick update on the situation.

heavyset_go 5y ago

I can't remember a time in my life when war reporting was accurate. I do find it interesting, though, that the media is willing to show the civilian casualties of this war, when there was a practical media blackout on the same type of reporting of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

einarfd 5y ago
That's not surprising at all. American forces had a very bad experience with reporters that reported damning stories about them in Vietnam. In Iraq and Afghanistan they took actions to make that kind of reporting hard, and the reporting they wanted easy. It wasn't even that secret and I'm fairly sure I at least saw some reporting on that they where doing this in Norwegian, and possibly British media.
inglor_cz 5y ago
There is a lot of OSINT now, given that the war theatre is located in a developed country with network coverage and a dozen million smartphones. From this point of view, accuracy is probably better than in previous wars. We didn't have much OSINT from Hindu Kush.

samsolomon 5y ago

For what it’s worth the Institute for the Study of War has been putting out excellent, unbiased analysis about the war since day one. https://understandingwar.org/ https://understandingwar.org/