WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON — Deputy Nightly editor Tyler Weyant writes: This section of the newsletter was a little delayed by a tweet that threw POLITICO journalists covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine into a tizzy: A missive from an Israeli journalist reading "#BREAKING: Russia expels US ambassador from Russia." I would link to the tweet, but it no longer exists. Our colleagues with sources immediately did some digging. We warned people to be ready for the State Department briefing in the afternoon. We were ready. Then we learned: It wasn't true. The real story, the expulsion of an American as part of an ongoing crackdown on diplomats by both countries, was not as seismic. Our colleague Halley Toosi confirmed the ambassador wasn't getting booted: "It's not true right now. The way things are going, it could be true at some point." The episode speaks to a huge problem plaguing news media, governments, and the global public: There is a shocking amount of information on the Russia-Ukraine crisis on social media, and a lot of it is unconfirmable, deceptive or just plain wrong. To talk about the newest frontier for sorting fact from fiction in wartime, we talked to defense reporter Paul McLeary. This conversation has been edited. What has been the most difficult aspect of gleaning accurate information about the Russian invasion of Ukraine? It seems like there are dozens of claims to confirm or clarify every hour. Without being on the ground in Ukraine, there's a tendency to over-rely on the steady stream of videos posted to social media and frantically repeat (or retweet) what they're telling you. As we've seen, some videos are actually from the fighting in 2014, or took place in Donbas several years ago, etc. There has also been a rush to post videos of Russian prisoners of war, a possible violation of the Geneva Conventions. The war is only a week old, but the steady stream of propaganda and video manipulation has been immense. How do you manage that stream? A lot of it is basic journalism, checking with sources, confirming info, but it is a pretty powerful firehose. It really is. Add to it a language and time/distance barrier, and it becomes more difficult. The trick is to bite things off in digestible pieces and be careful about drawing overly broad conclusions. I covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both on the ground and from Washington. The two ways of covering conflict are almost completely opposite, but it's also true that no one vantage point gives you a clearer picture. War is chaos and invention and improvisation at all levels and by all sides. On the ground, you're often seeing it through a soda straw, and you're immersed in tactical, day-to-day information gathering. It's personal, and at times emotional. From a distance, you're focused more on the larger movements of governments. Social media might lead some to believe that line has been blurred, but it hasn't. Watching a video of Russian vehicles moving down the street doesn't give you that granularity you have if you were there. What do we know about the death count for the Russian military? The Russians came out today and said about 500 soldiers have died. The Ukrainians have put that figure at nearly 10 times that. The Ukrainians have been putting out big numbers since the start of the war as part of their overall messaging campaign, and it has been taken with a grain of salt as the product of the fog of war and an attempt to influence the narrative. The fact that Russia would admit to even 498 soldiers killed in six days of fighting is surprising, as they have always held that information close. The number of dead is remarkable, however — Russia lost more soldiers in one week than the U.S. ever lost in any one month while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the 498 could be an undercount, the 6,000-plus number that Kyiv is reporting is also an overcount. Either way, Moscow is losing the narrative war in every dimension. For people who aren't reporters with sourcing and experience under their belts, how would you advise managing the barrage of information on their feeds? You'll never know the truth about any one skirmish, or battle, on the day it happens. War moves in waves, and it's unpredictable and chaotic. Even with video being tweeted around the world in seconds, there's likely no answer to be found in the moment — things can and will change as soon as the camera turns off, and you don't know what the camera CAN'T see. Also, beware of sweeping conclusions. Propaganda and messaging is being practiced by all the parties involved in the fight, for a variety of reasons. It's frustrating not to have a solid hold on exactly what is happening, and why it's happening. But conflicts aren't static, and they'll always resist easy answers and pat explanations.
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