I'm not sure whether to trust the reporting here. This photo has the date 11.25.2023 annotated on it, but it is definitely not recent. Here's the same media outlet showing this same exact picture last year:

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3478596-over-32000-enquiries-received-from-russian-families-as-to-soldiers-whereabouts.html

So, best case scenario, they lack journalistic integrity and decided to just re-use an old photo to show what it looks like when people surrender. Worst case scenario, they made everything in the article up. I mean, I hope that it's true that people are surrendering rather than voluntarily going into the meat grinder; it speaks to rock bottom morale on the Russian side. But I can't trust this media outlet.

[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Could be using a stock photo for getting the story out quickly. Still, good to be skeptical of any fast news coming from the region.

[–] elbucho@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I mean, sure, but it's incredibly dishonest to plaster today's date and a timestamp on it as if to suggest that that's the date/time that the picture was taken. If you're going to include a stock photo in your report, or in this case, an old photo, journalistic integrity dictates that you clearly label it as such, and these guys very much did not.

[–] Ulara@sopuli.xyz 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you look below, the photo is clearly labeled "This photo is illustrative".

[–] elbucho@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Yes, I see that. But it is vague, and is very much not up to the standards of international journalistic integrity. Here's a list of guidelines that news organizations around the world strive to stick to:

https://ijnet.org/en/resource/writing-photo-captions

As you can see in the photo on the posted article, there is no attribution. There is also no text that clearly labels it as a stock image. The phrase "this photo is illustrative" does not do a good job of conveying that. Additionally, the annotation on the image is misleading. If it's the date stamp of the article, it's a poor practice to overlay that over the image, because typically when you have a date annotation on an image, you're conveying that that's the date that photo was taken.

What they should have done is provide an annotation directly under the photo conveying that it was an image from earlier on in the war showing Russian soldiers surrendering. If the origin of the photo was known, then they should also include that (eg. AFP/Getty Images). If there was a known date that the photo was taken, they should include that.

Basically, they did a shit job at annotating their source photo, and it is an unforgivable sin for organizations that value journalistic integrity. Since this organization clearly doesn't value it enough to get it right, I cannot trust their reporting.

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