Did France 2 “lie” about the war in Ukraine in an 8 p.m. newscast? On social networks, a subject broadcast on August 10 has been widely taken up and criticized in recent days. In this update on the strikes against the Zaporizhie nuclear power plant, the journalist comments: “This missile planted in the roof which did not explode fell only a few meters from a nuclear reactor, here, in this red building”.
But this comment caused a reaction: “It’s a chimney”, points out a surfer on August 21 in a viral video on his Just Milieu Facebook page. “France 2 is lying live”, he is indignant, while “a pretty fake news” is denounced. On August 21, the Le Libre Penseur Twitter account accused TF1, in a viral post, to “repeat” with “the same false images provided by NATO”. A video on YouTube, from a Yellow Vests channel, also reports that France 2 “wants to believe that a Russian missile has landed near a power plant”.
FAKE OFF
This is not fake news, but an “unfortunate error”, explained France 2, in a press release posted on social networks Monday, August 22. The subject was produced using images from APTN, the American television agency of Associated Press, to which France Télévisions subscribes.
The public channel explains on Twitter that, by mistake, one of these images was “misinterpreted”. “It shows a damaged chimney, not a missile, as the commentary says,” she acknowledges. France 2 apologizes to viewers.
Images shot by the Russian Ministry of Defense
At the beginning of August, kyiv and Moscow accused each other of bombardments on the site of the nuclear power plant, controlled by the Russian army. The images used were first shot by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and broadcast in particular by Zvezda, the television channel of the armed forces of the Russian Federation. Several topics on tvzvezda.ru show the same damaged chimney (like here from 59 seconds in this excerpt uploaded on August 7, 2022), with the Russian media accusing Ukraine of being responsible for the shootings. NATO is therefore not the author of this video.
HAS 20 minutes, we have also used these images, dated August 7 and provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense to the Reuters news agency, to which we have a subscription. They were used in a video posted on August 8. In the United States or in Europe, other media have broadcast these extracts to discuss the damage suffered by the nuclear power plant, such as CNN, TV5Monde or TF1.
But the private French channel did not confuse a chimney with a missile, contrary to what was said on Twitter. In the 13 Hours newspaper of August 20, a journalist explains in commentary that “for five months, the site of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant has been the target of incessant shooting” while the images of the damaged chimney are shown. It is not said that the chimney is a missile planted in the ground.