Journalists accused the Luhansk Regional State Administration of stealing news from others: what happened?

Journalist Alexander Belokobylsky accused the Luhansk Regional Military Administration (OVA) of stealing news. He is outraged that officials take news from other sources without crediting the original source.

According to him, the OVA does this regularly. This is discussed in the article "Farvater.Skhid."

"Every journalist knows that it's essential to reference the original source when taking news from somewhere. The Luhansk OVA frequently takes news from publications writing about the region and presents it as their own. In my opinion, this is completely inconsistent with the Ethical Code of civil servants," he writes.

As an example, the article mentions a case where the author saw their news about the "black market" for internet access in temporarily occupied territories in the publication "Severodonetsk Online" with the headline "LOVA: A café in Rubizhne sells Wi-Fi only to occupiers, Privolie and Novodruzhesk still without communications," which referenced a Facebook post from the regional administration.

Belokobylsky notes that he took the initiative to call the Department of Mass Communications of the LOVA and ask where they obtained this news. They responded that a "specially trained person" monitors the information space of the temporarily occupied territories, submits the findings in the morning, and thus the morning summary is formed.

Here’s how the conversation went:

– So, this was a fresh piece of news that the employee found on Wednesday? – I clarify.

– Yes, – replies Albina Valeryevna.

– But we found this news back on Monday, and the department staff would have had to scroll back through the chat for three days to see this message.

– They might not have seen it earlier. Because we check some sources and not others. We don’t review every channel every day. They could have seen it with a delay, – explains Albina Kusheleva.

The journalist suggested that the reality was different. In his view, the department employee saw the fresh news on "Farvater" in the evening and included this message in the morning summary without referencing the publication. In other words, they pretended to have found the Telegram message that the news was based on independently.

It turned out that "Farvater.Skhid" is not the only publication from which the Luhansk OVA consistently steals news. Instead of digging through social media to find something new and interesting, officials simply take news from others and don’t even bother to rewrite it in different words. Some colleagues mentioned that the outrage has passed, and they have simply grown accustomed to it.

"The Luhansk Regional Military Administration still exists, even though the region is effectively fully occupied. There is nothing for it to administer. It exists partly as a reservoir for personnel reserves for future de-occupation, and partly as a symbol: implying that we do not abandon those territories. And in this sense, the LOVA provides its information – as if saying, 'even though we are not there, we know everything and are in control of the situation,'" the article states.

In conclusion, the author notes that in reality, this "control of the situation" is a fiction, and the Luhansk OVA, instead of doing its own work, takes news from others without referencing the original sources, which is at the very least unethical.

Previously, we reported that in official messages on the website and in the Telegram channel of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration, the abbreviation "LPR" can occasionally be found. This name is considered unlawful and is not recommended for use, especially by government bodies or local self-government at the level of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC). Meanwhile, those responsible for communications in the OVA emphasize that this is merely a "format understandable to the audience" and not "tolerance towards quasi-republics."