Think reporting on Trump is hard? Try being a journalist in Donetsk

2017/1/12 23:49:53

<Alisa Sopova: “When war came to my city in eastern Ukraine, it was hard – but vital – for people like me to stay objective.”

 


From the Guardian, Jan 11, 2017

 

When I started working as a journalist in my native city of Donetsk I never imagined that war would come to town, until the day it did.

 

In the spring of 2014 tanks and pro-Russia separatists showed up on the streets of the city, which was quickly turned into the capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

 

I was a news editor at Donbas, the largest newspaper and website in the city and responsible for a dozen reporters covering local news. We reported on the governor’s weekly press conferences, the construction of a new hockey arena, several scandalous crimes a year – that was our journalistic routine. It felt like nothing unexpected could happen.

 

Then it did. Within days my neighbourhood had become a battlefield between the separatists and the national army and my newspaper was forced to suspend its activities, but this was an international news story so I was offered work as a fixer, then as a reporter for the New York Times.

 

My office dresses were replaced by a flak jacket and helmet. I saw people fighting, surviving – and dying. My colleagues and I often found ourselves under fire.

 

I quickly came to realise that the biggest challenge for journalists was not the physical danger, but the moral and emotional dilemmas posed by covering events in your homeland.

 

Should you write about corruption in the national army, knowing that your story will be distorted by the Russian propaganda machine and used against your country? How do you balance opinions about the conflict while your brother, a Ukrainian soldier, is imprisoned and tortured by the insurgents (a situation my colleague faced)?

 

These are the complicated but real choices that Ukrainian journalists still face. It’s easy to be a person of principle in a peaceful and democratic environment, but as soon as the situation gets personal journalists are told that “truth above neutrality” must prevail. However, that “truth” is never simple.

 

My house in Donetsk was shelled by government forces. They were retaliating because an hour earlier rebels, who were trying to use my family as a human shield, had shelled government forces from my backyard. Journalists in DPR mention only the first shelling. Ukrainian journalists mention only the second. Being neutral, you have to report on both. I did and never regretted it.

 

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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017 ... g-a-journalist-in-donetsk

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