Top Comment8 Apr 2022

War on Truth: 6. The View from the Other Side

Marianna Vishegirskaya is the pregnant woman who has unwittingly found herself at the centre of one of the most disputed events of the war.

In a previous episode we looked at how Russia falsely accused her of helping fake photos of the aftermath of its attack on a maternity hospital, in which at least three people were killed.

But now Marianna has told her side of the story, after escaping the besieged city of Mariupol with her husband and newborn baby.

Her interview, given to a pro-Kremlin journalist, flatly contradicts much of what Russia has said up to now. But some of her comments have been cherry picked to promote a new version of events which also absolves Russia of any blame.

Despite all the contradictions in the propaganda, Marianna’s Russian friend Yaroslava still believes Russian state media rather than the woman she knows personally.

It’s a sign of the power of the information war being fought over Ukraine alongside the military battle. And like the conflict on the ground, this fight also has real consequences for the people whose lives it touches.

Russia’s military assault has been accompanied by an onslaught of disinformation and propaganda from state media, trolls and influencers. With all sides seeking to capture and control the narrative, how do you tell what is fake and what is real?

In this podcast series, BBC disinformation reporter Marianna Spring investigates stories from Ukraine, Russia, and around the world, and hears from those caught up in the battle for the truth.

Producer: Joseph Martin

Editor: Ed Main

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(100)

How the 'Cornell 7' rape case became a call to action

An alleged case of gang rape at a Cornell frat house has caused widespread outrage after new details emerged in a civil suit brought by the purported victim. Evidence including a Snapchat screenshot a...

2 Okt 39min

Has Hunter Biden fumbled the bag?

After years spent sheltering from the public gaze, Hunter Biden re-entered the mainstream consciousness last summer via a surprise YouTube appearance alongside prominent alternative media figure Andre...

25 Sep 34min

Why deepfake wizards went underground

Sexualised deepfakes by commission - until administrators shut down a popular request forum earlier this year, self-styled 'wizards' were offering this service at scale via the imageboard site 4chan. ...

18 Sep 31min

How Charlie Kirk achieved internet immortality

A year since the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, social media users are marking what has controversially become known as the 'Kirkiversary'. Far from the enduring political legacy...

11 Sep 29min

Angel Vic and the truth about hustle culture

It's the latest example of an influencer's digital persona disintegrating before our eyes. For several years, Angel Victoria Murdock has been portraying a life of self-made success, from real estate d...

4 Sep 34min

Lindsay Clancy and the age of TikTok trials

A Massachusetts jury are deliberating in the shocking case of Lindsay Clancy, a mother who admits to killing her three young children amid suffering, her lawyers argue, extreme post-partum psychosis. ...

27 Aug 38min

Everybody wants to be Ellie Ellis

How did a 16-year-old girl with no prior online presence manage to gain more than 700k TikTok followers within a week of her first post? On this episode, we discuss the theories behind Ellie Ellis' un...

21 Aug 38min

Exposed: the faceless accounts inflaming the Ceuta crisis

After roughly 78,000 migrants made the journey from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in a matter of hours at the end of July, reporters across the world were quick to identify the role of socia...

14 Aug 30min