Mistakes made by the world’s leading media in their wording

We used to read about wars in the world and not pay attention to the details: “conflict” or “invasion”, “rebels” or “terrorists”. We read a short note in some strange media, and as a result, we formulated our own opinion about the event. This is probably how Europeans, Americans, and all people in general, are now forming their own impression of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is difficult to fight this approach, because it is impossible to teach media literacy to the whole world in a year or two.

That’s why it’s important to work not only with the end consumer of media products, but also with the media directly. Especially with the leading media, which for some reason are generally considered to be a source of unwaveringly truthful information. Thus the linza agency team, together with the WithUkraine team, created a project aimed at drawing attention to the inadmissibility of using pro-Russian language in the coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war in the world media.

This project was made possible thanks to the support of the NGO Public Diplomacy Platform and ERIM within the framework of the Resilience Program, a 30-month project funded by the European Union and implemented by ERIM in partnership with the Black Sea Trust, the East Europe Foundation, the Human Rights House Foundation, and the Human Rights House in Tbilisi.

Together, we developed a series of five Instagram Reels that highlighted the most egregious examples of inaccuracies in the news by international media and emphasized the possible negative consequences. And, of course, we did not forget about the correct wording that should be used in the future.

So the WithUkraine team provided the topics and texts, and the linza agency team was responsible for the visualization. We chose a quick video collage style for it. This helps to reflect the issues raised in the video as effectively as possible. This style is equally effective with both sound on and off, as both viewing options are quite common among Instagram users.

Results:

284,000+ views, 4,600+ likes, 400+ saves, and an additional 50,000+ reach on Twitter.