Analysis
War in Ukraine: the media face a lasting conflict
Two years ago, the outbreak of war in Ukraine generated unprecedented media momentum.
While the fighting on the ground is getting bogged down, the Ukrainians fear a decline in press interest and therefore public support.
Associated Press journalist Evgeniy Maloletka points to smoke rising after the bombing of a maternity ward at a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. © Mstyslav Chernov / AP
By: Aurore Lartigue Follow
Advertisement
Read more
On February 24, 2022, when
Vladimir Putin
decided to invade Ukraine
,
it was also the media around the world that got into battle gear.
Objective: to report on this event, unimaginable a few weeks previously.
The early stages of the war benefited from exceptional coverage.
The media deploy considerable resources.
Some articles from the time mention “
2,000
journalists from the four corners of the world, including 200 French
”.
For several weeks, the major chains send teams who take turns constantly for months.
This is the case at France Médias Monde (RFI, France 24, MCD).
“
We were lucky to have had a correspondent on site for a long time, who alerted us several weeks in advance to the risks of invasion, so we had the means to prepare
,” recalls Patrick Adam, editor in head of world news at RFI.
Independent journalists, not necessarily seasoned, are also flocking in numbers.
RFI's digital editorial staff provides daily live coverage
of the war for 121 days, something never before seen.
LeMonde.fr
starts a live broadcast, which has never closed since.
“
At Libération and at Le Monde, the war was in the headlines continuously between February 24 and March 16
,” reported the Acrimed media observatory in an article entitled
Media and Ukraine: the continuous war
, recounting the media madness around the outbreak of war.
France 2 relocates its 8 p.m. news to Lviv, the shows and special editions follow one another on the radio and on the continuous news channels, even putting the presidential campaign in France in the background.
The media are fully engaged in this war.
A decreasing level of media coverage, but still strong
The week of the launch of the “special operation” – as Russia calls it – the war was mentioned 137,531 times in the French media, according to
the Tagaday media monitoring platform
.
One in five topics is devoted to war.
“
In recent media history, only the first confinement at the start of the Covid pandemic generated greater media coverage
,” points out the platform.
An overmedia coverage which is justified by a “
cocktail
” of factors, comments Arnaud Mercier.
“
It’s war, and war at the gates of Europe,”
underlines the professor of information and communication sciences at Panthéon-Assas University.
There is also the war of “
values
” side, Ukraine being “
attacked at the moment when it claims to join the European Union and the democratic camp
”.
And the difference in strength in a fight often presented as that of David against Goliath.
All this gives rise to a strong feeling of “
identification
” among Westerners.
“
It is also a war which was very quickly documented on social networks, whether on one side or the other, by civilians or soldiers, who produced a large number of images.
Furthermore, Kiev played the card of welcoming journalists
, underlines the specialist
, encouraging journalists from all over the world to come and see the war.
» He compares it with
the war in Tigray
, Ethiopia, “
where the two parties to the conflict reached consensus on the idea of excluding journalists
”, he recalls.
And despite hundreds of thousands of deaths, according to experts, it has had very little presence in the media.
“
This war was also widely covered,”
adds Arnaud Mercier, “
because the concrete economic consequences outside Ukraine were felt quite quickly with the problem of Russian gas and therefore an energy crisis which led to a rise in prices.
It was therefore also the possibility of producing very impactful information.
»
But at the dawn of a third year of war, as the conflict bogs down and another has broken out in Gaza, between Israel and Hamas, has the public tired of the war?
In any case, its media coverage has gradually declined.
“
During the second year of the conflict, coverage of the subject by the 8 p.m. news was divided by 3.6, by 2.5 on the radio mornings and by 1.7 on the 24-hour news channels
” , according to
La Revue des Médias
which studied the media coverage of the conflict in Ukraine.
“
Of course, we cannot have the same attention as in the first days or weeks,”
admits Tetyana Ogarkova, Ukrainian journalist and head of the international department at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, founded in 2014 after the annexation of the Crimea by Russia
.
I remember February 24, 2022, I couldn't get up from my chair
.
There were explosions here, near our house, so we had to think about what we were going to do with our family, the children... But I was frozen in front of the screen because there were calls foreign journalists all the time.
In the early days, I think I did eleven or twelve interviews a day, until late at night.
Today, I continue to respond to around ten press requests, but that's per month.
So there is always this interest, but it is much less, which
is
also completely normal because we cannot be in this state of shock and indignation all the time.
»
A decline in media interest that must be put into perspective.
The war in Ukraine remained the first topic covered by the French media in 2023. And according to the latest Tagaday study, the media presence of the war in Ukraine “
still remains at relatively high levels with more than 100,000 topics since the start of the year, i.e. since January 1, 2024, more than 2,100 per day
.”
With renewed interest recently, notes the media monitoring platform, with the capture of the town of Avdiïvka by the Russians or the blocking of American aid to Congress.
A decreasing but still strong media presence.
© Tagaday
Here too, it is the cascading consequences of this war which can partly explain this persistence in the media.
“
Energy, inflation, industry, purchasing power... The impact of the war in Ukraine still affects all aspects of the economy and the daily lives of the French today,”
underlines the study.
Its economic and social consequences have been mentioned in just over a third of topics since 2023.
”
Emmanuelle Chaze, correspondent journalist in Kiev for RFI, France 24,
Ouest-France
and other European media, also tempers this drop in interest.
“
This year, we once again had the impression of being in
breaking news [special edition, Editor's note]
constantly
,” she testifies.
If it wasn't movements on the front line, it was bombing of a city... There was no downtime.
Except at the time of the Hamas attacks on October 7
.
Topic orders are dropping.
Many freelance
journalists
who had stayed also left the country at that time, she said.
“
For about a month, the media lost interest in Ukraine.
This also worried the Ukrainians who said to themselves: that's it, they have moved on to something else.
But we are used to this kind of cycle.
Once the astonishment had passed, interest returned.
»
The risk of the “
normalization
” of war
The media also adapt to the evolution of the war.
“
The media coverage of the war in Ukraine follows the normal rhythm of the media coverage of a very high-profile event, that is to say that there is a very strong enthusiasm from all the media at the start, that it reaches peaks and that, by definition, these peaks cannot last,
analyzes Arnaud Mercier.
Because there is always a form of public weariness, unfortunately a trivialization of war information, in the sense that there are always new battles, new deaths.
» In other words, media monitoring also corresponds to the different phases of the fighting on the ground, describing “small peaks” according to specific events, such as the discovery of the crimes in Boutcha or Prigozhin's coup.
Ups and downs that Andrii Maliouk, who has worked as a fixer for media around the world since the beginning of March 2022, has clearly felt. For this second anniversary, the media, which are particularly fond of symbolic dates, have their eyes turned once again to Ukraine.
He also accompanies Canadian television reporters.
But after the media frenzy of the first three months, “
there was an initial lull during the summer
,” he describes.
With the counter-offensive, the teams came back.
Then there was the first anniversary.
But since the fall, it's been quite calm again.
» Teams of journalists who came regularly no longer come back, the phone rings less... Even if he knows that Ukraine "
cannot stay constantly on the front page
", Andrii fears this "
fatigue
" that he feels as a “
generalized lack of interest
”.
“
I don’t know if it’s weariness,”
says Emmanuelle Chaze, who in any case doesn’t feel a drop in interest, “but it
’s certain that there is a “
normalization
” of war which is dangerous. .
Because
I think it's a mistake to think that it's a war like any other.
»
Tetyana Ogarkova also fears this “
trivialization
” of the war.
“
Two years ago, everyone was very outraged.
Today, it has become normal that there is a war in Ukraine, within Europe – geographical at least – that there are strikes every day,
she laments.
Public opinion is getting used to it.
Today we have massive missile and drone strikes without receiving any request from the international press interested in the conditions of this strike, etc.
»
Interesting the media and public opinion, “
a question of survival
”
Continuing to arouse media interest is “
a question of survival
,” says Tetyana Ogarkova, who also still hosts the podcast
“Ukraine Faces War”
(in French).
We have to invite each other back.
»
How ?
Recalling that this war does not only concern Ukrainians, she emphasizes.
“
We must recall why this war should be of interest, explain that it is not a war of Russia against Ukraine, but that it is a war of Russia against Europe.
For us, it is very clear, but we must still insist on the fact that the threat is completely direct, not only for Ukraine, but also for the NATO countries, that if we do not enough support, we will end up with a war of another magnitude.
»
“
Ukraine will not be able to win the war alone.
And like diplomacy, the media are an important means
,” explains the journalist.
She is not the only one to make a direct link between media interest and political support.
“
The less media coverage there is, the less public opinion feels concerned and the less politicians worry about Ukraine,”
explains Andrii Maliouk
.
This has a direct impact on the war.
»
And to cite as an example the recent loss of Avdiïvka, where much was said about the lack of ammunition and adequate equipment.
This military setback, added in particular to tensions around imports of agricultural products from Ukraine which compete with European countries, particularly with Poland, the Ukrainians' primary support, seems to have amplified in recent weeks the Ukrainians' concern about the erosion of support. Western, like their president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Simple perception or reality?
Several studies have attempted in recent weeks to survey the opinion of Europeans.
And rather seems to indicate that if support weakens, it still remains at a fairly high level.
This is evidenced, for example, by this
Eurobarometer survey
from December, according to which nearly nine out of ten people (89% for the European Union, 90% for France) support the idea of providing humanitarian aid to populations affected by war, and more than eight in ten (84% for the EU, 83% for France) approve of welcoming people fleeing war into the EU.
72% of Europeans (64% for France) are in favor of providing financial support to Ukraine.
Editorial choices
In Ukraine too, a form of media fatigue is felt after two years of “national information marathon”.
This unification of public and private Ukrainian media decreed after the outbreak of the war put an end to the relative plurality of the media, by offering a single program centered on a single subject: the war.
If this sacred union remains relevant, gaps have been created, certain Ukrainian journalists have, for example, opened their own YouTube channel to find a little freedom.
However, explains Sergiy Tomilenko in a response sent by email to RFI, that “
Ukrainian journalists, like the rest of Ukrainians, cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening, change the subject, because that would amount to accepting aggression. and to lose
.”
Praising how Ukrainian media adapted and quickly learned to cover war-related emergencies, the president of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), the main union of Ukrainian journalists, thanks “
the media which send their journalists to Ukraine and the independent journalists, who by documenting it, draw attention to the war
”.
Despite the drop in coverage, some media outlets continue to follow the situation in Ukraine on a daily basis.
According to the study carried out by La Revue des Médias, France Info and France Inter continue to give pride of place to the conflict in their morning shows, just like France 2 in its news.
If today, RFI's special correspondents no longer take turns in Ukraine, two correspondents are still on site permanently and journalist-technician pairs are regularly sent to cover certain news.
Arnaud Mercier also points out the “ unprecedented
” case
of LCI, which has become, he analyzes, “
the chain of war in Ukraine
”.
“
The channel has really set up a “task force” to cover the war in Ukraine, commenting on it every day, with experts
,
”
underlines the media specialist.
Which also allowed him, by creating a sort of “
meeting
”, to grab a few audience points.
Some websites continue to hold a daily “live”.
Opened the day before the outbreak of war, Monde.fr has been running day and night ever since.
“
A unique case at Monde.fr,”
explains
Geoffroy Clavel, editor-in-chief of the digital editorial team.
Symbolically, it has always remained open, even at the time of the attacks of October 7, when we had less force to put into it
.”
An editorial choice which goes hand in hand with the still strong commitment of the newspaper in general, but which also responds to “
strong interest from readers
”, affirms the editor-in-chief of the site, which still claims at least 250,000 readers per day.
Nothing to do with the beginnings where “
the live was more consulted than the Le Monde site itself
”, but still very high.
Enough to challenge the idea of a waning of public interest.
Basically, Pierre Bouvier, who has regularly hosted live on the Le
Monde
website since the beginning, does not have the impression of going in circles.
“
There is always something to tell
,” assures the journalist.
No risk on that front either for Emmanuelle Chaze, for whom, beyond the military issues, there is still a lot to tell about this war.
“
How the war affects Ukrainians, the question of millions of internally displaced people, external refugees, all social questions,
she lists...
Environmental questions have barely been addressed, while the
rupture of the Kakhovka dam
is the biggest ecocide that Europe has known.
Just like the question of deported children.
»
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your inbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
Share :
Continue reading on the same themes:
Media
Ukraine
RFI
our selection
Russia
Volodymyr Zelensky