Image credit: Aleksandra Sidorova
This conversation between student journalist Aleksandra Sidorova and Communication Studies professor Ben Medeiros took place live in a talk show-style format during SUNY Plattsburgh’s “Black Solidarity Day” event in November 2024.
Drawing on her experience as a journalist and her personal background, Sidorova critiques the framing of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the news, the role of narrative frameworks in journalism, and the dangers of reducing complex issues to simplistic storylines involving heroes and villains. Ultimately, she argues for the use of neutral language, the humanization of subjects in news coverage, and media literacy strategies to help news consumers be more discerning.
The conversation has been edited slightly for clarity and length.
Ben Medeiros: I want to let my guest introduce herself.
Aleksandra Sidorova: My name is Aleks. Aleksandra Sidorova. I am a student in my last semester. I’ve been working with our student newspaper, Cardinal Points for my whole career here. I’ve also had experience working for local papers, like the Plattsburgh Press-Republican and WCAX, a local TV station. On a personal note, I’m also from Russia. I was born in Moscow. I have a Russian passport. I came over here as an international student.
So I’ll just kind of flash back to February 2022, when a full blown war started between Russia and Ukraine. And that time has been pretty difficult for me to navigate, because when your country is at war, you experience a lot of different emotions. You experience the sadness for the lives uprooted and taken away by someone claiming to represent you. You experience a sort of responsibility or guilt for what’s happening, because, like I mentioned, these people are supposed to represent me. I’m supposed to identify with them. I’ve experienced, you know, hurt and anger reading stuff online, and I’ve also just experienced plain old frustration reading the news with how the conflict has been portrayed,
BM: Could you explain the frustration with what you were seeing in the news?
AS: I’ve had people tell me that this war is a ‘big deal,’ it’s worth paying attention to, because – to paraphrase – it’s white people fighting white people. And I hope something about that sits wrong with you, too. I don’t believe that is why we should be focusing on the war. It’s a tragedy that could affect everyone, plain and simple. And it’s not just in conversation that you see people perpetuating the message that it’s a big deal because white people are doing it. Reputable news sources like CBS and Al Jazeera have done that too.
BM: It’s as if they’re saying the conflict would be “normal” if it were happening in North Africa or the Middle East or something, but now it’s “exceptional” and thus we can pay attention to it and take it seriously now that it’s European people.
AS: Their Europeanness shouldn’t matter in terms of how we empathize with these people and how we tell their stories.
But this term “storytelling” is pretty key here. We think about storytelling in news a lot because stories have long been a way to connect with each other and explain the world around us. That’s just what works, that’s what’s memorable to people. Even in grammar, you can’t have a complete sentence without something happening – you have to have a verb.
What has also been happening for a long time, though, is that [the action-orientation of our stories] sometimes brings them into the realm of gossip. If the story spreads that Mary and John are getting a divorce, hypothetically, it’s easy for people to infer some further action to keep the story going – John must have cheated, for instance.
BM: Things don’t always get passed from gossiper to gossiper in exactly the same way.
AS: Yeah. Because notice how, in my example, someone simply hypothesized that the marriage was ending. We don’t know for sure, so yeah, when it comes to word of mouth, sometimes we misinterpret what someone says, and it’s just in passing. You don’t really spend time looking into the gossip and fact checking. Like, is this really what’s happening in my community?
So I like to use the example of gossip as kind of an analogy to how people often consume news, because news is kind of gossip on steroids. We use news to understand the world around us, and stories are part of what makes it easier for us to digest.
It also just so happens that we’ve integrated this story telling into a business model. In the system that we live in today, journalism has to do its public service while making money. So as much as we understand that there can be flaws in the way information spreads through stories, we’re been telling stories for thousands of years, and it helps us make money in the news business. It’s what people are most receptive to.
BM: So how do then we get into the way that the news tends to tell stories a little bit? Are there recurring patterns in how you know, maybe the business model or the medium incentivizes the telling of stories in a particular way?
AS: Yeah, so at least in the Western storytelling model, we’re used to having a beginning, a middle and an end. We’re used to having characters and characters sometimes also take on the roles of heroes and villains. It’s a really easy way to tell a story.
Online especially, we don’t have the time or energy to read a lot, so sometimes reading just the headline is enough, and a headline is simply a hook. When we craft headlines, we do need to include some sort of verb (remember the English lesson) to show the audience that something is happening and they need to tune in. But a headline is also supposed to omit some details to make you keep reading, because if everything that is worth learning about is in the headline, why is there an article?
BM: So, but there’s always this need to kind of create a little bit of intrigue in the headline that when somebody actually doesn’t then follow through and read the whole piece, or scroll down to paragraph 16 to see the clarification of what that kind of juicy, salacious sounding thing was in the headline, they might actually miss it and just take away sort of a misleading impression.
AS: Yeah, absolutely. And when we’re talking about mass media, it’s a different scale from [interpersonal] gossip, which might be contained within maybe a dozen people. But with news media, it reaches millions of people, and the more players you have in the game, the more that information can get distorted.
To circle back to the role of heroes and villains in our stories, it also means a large number of people might identify you with the villain of a story, or you might find you identify with the side portrayed as the villain yourself.
BM: So yeah, can you clarify how that would work maybe with your own personal experience as an example. You’re a journalist, yes, but also a news consumer, and if you see something like the presentation of the conflict [between Russia and Ukraine] that we just saw, you’d be saying, hey, wait a second, the perpetrator is actually the one that sounds like me?
AS: Yeah, the perpetrator speaks my language, the perpetrator is, the perpetrator actually holds office in the place that I was born. So there’s kind of a connection there. It becomes a lot harder when there are people on the internet very much convinced that every single person in Russia has to support what is going on in Ukraine, because that’s how we tell our stories. Russia is doing this. Russians are doing that, or Russians are saying this. And that’s not always true.
Whenever we ramp up reporting on a conflict like this, we also see cases of hate crimes rise. For example, we see that like post-9/11, we had just an explosion of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-Sikh hate crimes. And in, let’s say, the past year, following the October 7 attacks, we see a spike in anti-Semitism. We see Islamophobic acts as well, we see anti-Arab sentiment generally. So there is a sort of effect that the stories we’re telling have on audiences, and sometimes audiences are what make it the hardest to consume news.
BM: Do you have any insight on why that is?
AS: People learn just one thing about you, and suddenly, based on the news they consumed, they think they know where you stand. And I also think that that can also speak to how we look down on countries outside of the US. Because if we just look at the United States, [to audience] how many of us here feel that the current government represents us? I’m not seeing many hands. So one person out of how many people we have in this room feels like the government represents them. And yet we think that in other countries, government does speak for the people.
BM: Well so if you are the reporter, nonetheless, what can you do to at least maybe minimize some of this kind of inflammatory reaction, or to at least tell a more complete story?
AS: While we’re still on the topic of headlines and what the story says, I do think it would be a good practice to use as neutral language as we can when we cover violence. As a reporter, I love having fun with headlines when the topic calls for it, like, you can be tongue in cheek if a topic is tongue in cheek, but I think that the way you minimize any miscommunication when you talk about violence is you just say what happened. So if this many people died, they died. If something killed these many people, it did that. I don’t believe we should be using stronger markers, like massacre, like slaughter.
BM: This is so interesting that in a way, with a more expressive word, you’re saying that as a journalist, you know that that’s going to lead people toward a particular kind of conclusion about who’s to blame, or something like that.
AS: I guess it does seem a little counterintuitive to avoid a more precise word that has some sort of connotation that can maybe add a little more detail to what we’re talking about. But I would suggest that we give the bare minimum of what happened, where, who, when, how, when you can. It doesn’t have to be particularly emotional or or provocative, because when violence happens, it’s already provocative.
BM: That’s the objectivity ideal sort of, right?
AS: Yeah, that’s what it can provide. We should try and pick out words that don’t particularly signal any alignment or judgment.
BM: But at the same time, wouldn’t you maybe also say that there are types of stories that news organizations in a conflict situation can tell about who’s being affected by those conflicts that would maybe tend to humanize people who wouldn’t get that treatment otherwise? Have you seen anything like that in the coverage of the Ukraine war, or anything, anything else?
AS: Absolutely. Well, since you asked specifically about the Ukraine war, there was a story about international couples where one person is from Russia, the other person’s from Ukraine, and how they navigate that difficult situation. Or kids and adults who are navigating disabilities and terminal illnesses like cancer, things that war prevents them from accessing.
So those are stories where, like, no matter where you stand, you should still be able to see a person’s humanity or understand that it’s still real people being involved.
BM: So that can still be kind of reconciled with this objectivity ideal because those are things that happened, those are important things that reveal something about the who, what, when, where, why. It’s simply providing a more complete account of how a conflict is affecting different people.
AS: Yeah, it’s simply that you ask more people. You should be talking to as many people affected as you can. So it’s not just you know what happened, but how has it been impacting these people in these different situations?
And that’s kind of why I got into journalism in the first place. We have so many different people experiencing so many different things, and unfortunately, violence is one of them. Stories have characters, and you should flesh out these characters. We should go out of our way to humanize all the characters in the stories, and give them more backstory.
BM: I think the best move now is to bring it home with the discussion of what on the other side of the coin we can do as audiences. What might we as media consumers try to keep in mind when we are approaching coverage of conflicts or simply just representations of people who we see as not like us?
AS: Yeah. So a very, very simple tip that you probably heard in a lot of different settings is to diversify your news feed. You shouldn’t be getting your news from just one source, and that applies to everything. Different outlets will tell the story in different ways, highlighting different components to the violence. So by having a diversity of new sources in your feed, you can kind of see what they have in common, see where they differ, and where they have parts in common, you can be reasonably certain that is what the facts are.
BM: Would you say, in a way, that that is kind of what you do as a journalist too? You corroborate what sources are telling you, and when they seem to kind of reinforce a similar picture, then that gives some weight to that account?
AS: Absolutely, and you know what? Sometimes, when I report on something that’s been reported before, I consult other news outlets. You want to be reasonably certain that what you’re saying is true and holds up, and that is what has the most overlap between what all of your sources have said. But you also value all the differences in perspective.
BM: That’s a really interesting commonality.
AS: In a way, you’re using news to research something that’s happening in your own life or in the world that you’re living in. So I don’t think it is much different from a reporter’s job. You [as a news consumer] are probably going to tell someone about this violence happening. It’s probably going to enter your discussions, and you want to be able to contribute and spread information that you can be reasonably certain holds up.
BM: I think maybe that’s a more daunting part of being a media or news consumer, we have actually kind of a responsibility to act in good faith – to think about what we’re sharing, and the basis of what it is that we’re saying. But also, what makes it so exciting to live in the world today is that there are so many ways if you’re curious about investigating something that you really can find so much about it.
AS: And you know, it is a privilege to have access to more than one news source. Going back to my personal stuff, my grandmother still lives in Russia, and she doesn’t speak English, so that doesn’t let her consume English media, and so she is likely to be consuming news that only tells her this specific story of what Russia is doing In Ukraine, or who we’re supposedly fighting in Ukraine.
BM: So anything else to wrap up, then?
AS: One last thing is in the case that you have to be consuming news that is personally difficult for you to to take in, in which you know you identify with the characters in the story, is to remember you have worth. You know where your judgments lie, and you know how you stand in relation to the characters in the story. So that did help me in processing the war, because I’m out here wearing a scarf [gestures to scarf] that is pretty important to me culturally. I don’t hide my identity, that’s just how I identify, and it doesn’t have to reflect any political views in the media.
BM: Even if you encounter reductive representations of your culture yourself, you’re kind of saying, don’t let it get to you.
AS: Yeah, don’t let them get to you, because you know you know your story best. You can fact check them all you want.
Benjamin A. Medeiros 