25 October 2018, Thursday, 09:38 410

IMI Selectively Finds Identical Stories 'Manipulative' Depending On Media

According to the rating of the IMI and the Texty.org project entitled News Anti-Rating. TOP-50 Ukrainian Websites Analysis, identical news stories are claimed to be negative or positive merely depending on the media they were posted by.

Such a tendency is clearly seen as a result of a close examination of the update of the rating available on the website of the Texty.org.

For instance, the IMI experts called 'manipulative' the headline of the Apostrophe online media outlet reading 20 Bullets Fired: New Evidence Of Assassination Attempt On Criminal Lord Outside Kyiv. However, in its text the Apostrophe cited the story of the UNIAN agency.

At that, the UNIAN's original story itself remained out of sight of the IMI experts despite it had identical headline.

After some examination of the NewsOne TV channel's news, the IMI experts called 'manipulative' a story entitled Kyiv Might Be Left Without Hot Water From August 1. The text of the story refers to the words of Deputy Chairperson of the Kyiv City State Administration Petro Panteleyev cited by his press-secretary Yuliya Hramotna for one of the market leaders, Ukrainska Pravda online media outlet. Despite the unstoppable desire to find discrepancies or false information, the experts never managed to detect the said story within the Ukrainska Pravda's website.

'Emotional manipulation' was found in a story by the Focus magazine. Its headline was Ukrainian Filmmaker Kanter Shoots Suicide On Camera. The Focus took the story from Ukrainska Pravda.

At the same time, the IMI experts somehow omitted conferring the rank of 'emotional manipulation' to the source story by Ukrainska Pravda.

Focus's another 'manipulation' vice was the headline reading Kyiv's Subway Bridge About To Fall - a bridge co-designer. However, both the headline and the text itself were identical to the ones posted earlier by Hromadske Radio and never suspected by the IMI.

The IMI paid particular attention to the Strana.ua online media, whose journalists had many times lambasted the organization. The experts put the story entitled Court Refuses To Return 2 Arrested SUVs To Vyshynskyi into the 'unreliable information' category. The title cited the Interfax-Ukraine news agency, but the IMI again found nothing suspicious in the agency's story.

Strana.ua's headline Poroshenko Accuses Media Of Overstating Corruption In Ukraine also made the IMI call it a fake. The words of the President saying "That is linked to high-profile exposures, proceedings and detentions. And the media element considerably boosts the impression of the overstated scale of the negative developments. By the way, the famous Transparency International's rating does not provide any information on the level of corruption, however it provides for the level of perception of corruption. In fact very few respondents faced corruption personally, but heard much about it from mass media" have been used by about 20 media organizations. However, the IMI noticed it only in the Strana.ua's material.

Besides, they never explained why the story by Obozrevatel entitled Kyiv Through Eyes Of Young Architects: Available Smart City Projects was called an 'unreliable story'. In it, the author describes and provides a photo essay about a children's holiday that really took place in the capital of Ukraine.

As earlier reported, Tetiana Popova, a media-expert / senior expert for strategic communications at the Information Security non-governmental organization, said that the rating organized by the IMI non-governmental organization and journalist analytical center was unprofessional.

"I cannot understand how could a story from Ukranews Denys Ivanesko written after our joint press conference with Sergiy Tomilenko get into the rating's 'unreliable news' category. The press conference was conducted with the participation of Professor Volodymyr Paniotto, the director general of the Kyiv International Sociology Institute. They in KMIS held a survey we referred to in out story," she wrote. "At the same time, similar news stories have also been published by Radio Liberty and the Ukrinform agency, however, so far no one has declared them unreliable," the expert added.