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Journalism of Courage
During the evening news show Monday on Russia’s state-controlled Channel One, a woman suddenly walked into the frame holding an anti-war poster. The unique protest quickly went viral.
According to BBC News, the handmade poster visible behind the presenter, written in Russian, read: “No war, stop the war, don’t believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here”.
Watch the moment here:
The woman was later identified as Marina Ovsyannikova. Pavel Chikov, a human rights lawyer in Russia, tweeted that the protester had been detained since the Monday broadcast.
OVD-Info, an independent Russian monitoring group, reported that Ovsyannikova was no outsider to the news organisation but an editor working at Channel One. In a video statement that was reposted by OVD-Info, Ovsyannikova stated that her father is Ukrainian and her mother is Russian, according to Euro News.
“What is happening in Ukraine now is a crime, and Russia is the aggressor,” she was quoted by Euro News, adding that she was ashamed of working at Channel One, “doing Kremlin propaganda”.
In a statement to state news agency TASS, Channel One said that “an incident took place with an extraneous woman in shot. An internal check is being carried out,” AFP reported.
Here’s how netizens reacted to the protest:
https://twitter.com/ferrictron/status/1503453637229568004
https://twitter.com/arina_toma/status/1503498214925873152
The incident happened as Russia launched a crackdown on independent media, where Kremlin’s version about the Ukraine conflict has been allowed. Legislation passed earlier this month made it illegal to call the military action an “invasion” or “war”. Even access to social media is restricted to curb the spread of information from foreign sources.
