Thread by @benbvi3ws

Yesterday I spent some time checking French, Belgian, mainstream media TV "treatment" of the 🇷🇺War against Ukraine 🇺🇦

My starting point is obviously my own experience and few years of mapping Telegram ecosystems and 5 months of War tracking, archival & amplifyukraine

French TV is really nuts, they spend most of the air time relaying extract you can get from @JuliaDavisNews but with the French commentary, often superficial, sensational and I must say : biased, my impression was that French TV's are mostly relaying Russian Propaganda in the

Name of "commenting it", why? Because they don't bring any other perspective, certainly not from a Ukrainian perspective, they keep coming back to Russian propaganda and Russian threats against Europe, UK or anyone else without clearly, bluntly countering the propaganda.

And that's not even counting with thousands of notions from #KyivNotKiev to the use of "separatists" narratives to explain, justify or describe the reality of the war.

When you spend some time on these TV's channels, it's as if Ukraine didn't even existed. Everything is seen

From either a French or Russian perspective, they spend hours talking about Russian threats, Russian claims, Russian capabilities, Russian latest rumors. They don't openly portray the 🇷🇺 narratives as propaganda, but they still use it to then comment on it, hence relaying them.

The problem is that the comments from most of the TV anchors and so called experts on the plateau are not expert at all, sometimes they have an occasional military background expert explaining things in a more technical less sensational approach but most of the time the comments

Are useless if not completely bullshit, bullshit because they mostly cover Russian actions, these actions are not framed in any way particular, they just give lots of room to Russian narratives and almost none, if not at all to Ukrainian realities and perspectives on the war

At most, they will ask, who's winning the war, based on key events from the last 5 months, as if France could afford to be an observer (yeah they sent some Caesars, wow!! What else?) commenting a football match. That's the impression I have. And it sucks!

There are so many facets to cover, military, strategic, humanitarian, relief, aid, logistics and yes propaganda, that when it exist on Ukraine side, is about inflating numbers of effectiveness of X/Y but cannot be compared to Russian propaganda narratives designed to twist truth

Yes there will be an occasional mistake and fog of war doesn't help but when French TV anchors, when speaking about propaganda out Russia and Ukraine in the same bag, as if their propaganda had the same intent, impact and reason to exist, it is properly insulting!

It's not journalism.

The worst of these bad TV day long so called "real time news" is that, honestly, it's bad quality, it's ridiculous, it's despicable often and it leads me to my next point ; these TV channels are often the source of clips that get shared on social media

Video Clips that, outside of the context of the hour/day long TV show, can be even more damaging in terms of information. It literally feels like France is rooting for Russia is some cases, the viral shorts make it look like as if the entire show was only about this.

If you go back at the source and watch the entire show (sorry to call it a show but that's what mainstream media are doing)

they are not informing, Twitter & Twitter Spaces are doing that, not the TV channels from the PAF.

So not only their "analysis" are often void of any actual real information/knowledge to understand the war but on top of that, the byproduct of their show ended viralized on social media platforms feeding the Russian with the best glimpse at what they have to say to shock

And they can spend a day with dramatic music and an entire shit show that ultimately empowers more Russia than Ukraine and feed their French audience with nothing.

Honestly the war against Ukraine is best covered on Twitter than anywhere else, and that's counting with trolls

And disinformation operations run by so called Embassies & Russian business under Russian control that keep spewing disinformation and blunt threats against countries and individuals on Twitter @TwitterSupport you've got work to do!

The gap between what I know form the collective Hive on Twitter and by listening #UkrainianSpaces or @MriyaReport is of much much better quality & knowledge than anything I have heard on any French TV for an entire day.

Legacy Media have to grow a spine!

To be honest, this is not just a French TV problem, take any of these channels TV.osintukraine.com and their coverage, compared to what the Hive is able to produce collectively is worth nothing.

The problem isn't the access to raw information, the problem is what/how they do

This is certainly not the first time or the first war that legacy media cannot cover properly, the difference is that this time, the amount of information we have from credible Ukrainian sources are vastly superior to the 2014 period or before.

Ukraine has its own voice

But most western media are not necessarily giving to these voices the place they deserve.

We're much more hyped by the Vogue shot than by the conditions of the volunteers & the reality at the front and the Gigantic humanitarian help Ukraine need right now on top of military aid

This time there is translation, video outside of telegram, there are thousands of Ukrainians advocating for their owns, being Voices against this tragedy but all mainstream media can do is to relay Russian State media with bad commentaries while pronouncing Kyiv like the invader?

I'm often critical and sometimes it's all or nothing with me but seriously, that's all they can do?