Natalia Antelava on Ukraine’s role for the world and the future of journalism
Natalia Antelava spent almost a decade working as a BBC correspondent but left in 2015 to start Coda Story to build an outlet that would bring context and continuity to coverage of major crises. With the start of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine, her work has become even more relevant.
On June 21, Lviv Media Forum held the first event of LMF Talks: “From the Caucasus to Africa: Global Fallout of the War in Ukraine,” featuring Antelava, who is Coda’s сo-founder and editor-in-chief. She comes from Georgia, but Coda has a 20-people-strong global newsroom that broadcasts for the English-speaking audience across the world.
At LMF Talks, Natalia Antelava discussed how Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine impacts the world, what Ukraine means for the future of worldwide democracy, and how the role of journalists has evolved in recent years.
We picked key highlights from the discussion, edited for length and clarity. You can watch a full recording of the hour-long talk on Lviv Media Forum’s Facebook page.
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Ukraine’s role in the world today
“For me, Ukraine is the most important place in the world today.
Ukraine is critically important for the future of global democracy and for the balance of powers in the world, for the future of the European Union, and just in general for the big battle between authoritarianism and democracy.
Ukrainians have been on the frontline of this battle for so long. I remember talking to 19-year-old boys in the trenches in the Donbas back in 2014 and 2015 and them saying, ‘we are fighting for the European Union’. I always found it infuriating [that it was hard to] explain to the Europeans that this is what this fight is about.
But, with [the start of the full-scale invasion], the Ukrainians did manage to explain this. The Europeans have finally woken up to the fact that this is a really global, really important battle.”
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The importance of communicating with the Global South
“It’s crucial to remember that Russia’s war in Ukraine is not the most important story for everyone in the world. The key to Ukraine’s global victory lies in Ukraine’s and its friends’ ability to explain to the rest of the world why this is their fight, too.
Ukraine is very far for a lot of the Global South, which is plagued by its own problems and is completely consumed by its own survival. The Kremlin has done a fantastic job manipulating that, manipulating the concept of colonialism. Russia is managing to sell itself to Africa as the ultimate anticolonial power. That’s really dangerous.
I was in Nairobi a couple of months ago. There is still a very clear sense there that ‘this is the West imposing their fight on us’. They are seeing this war as Europe’s war, their former colonial masters’ war. When it comes to the media landscape, it’s the Russian ambassadors that are writing op-eds and sending them to the Kenyan newspapers; and it’s the RT that is hiring correspondents left and right.
[Many people in the Global South don’t understand that Ukraine and post-Soviet states are victims of colonialism just like African or Latin American countries are]. We need to reframe how we think about colonialism and how we start a direct conversation about it.”
The crises news media face
“I don't believe in the death of journalism, I think we’re going to be just fine. But there is no question that we are in crisis.
Social media bears a lot of blame. It has a lot to answer for the information ecosystem that we live in, that makes it impossible for us to agree on anything because everyone has their own truth. We can’t solve anything because we can’t agree on the basics. Platforms have done terrible disservice to democracy worldwide.
But I also think it’s very important for journalists to look at themselves and see what journalism has done. Not journalists, but the news industry specifically, has done to the information ecosystem.
We’re so hung up on identifying fakes. But it’s not just about pieces of factually incorrect information, it’s about narratives. How narratives are created is much more important than the veracity of individual pieces of information. The information can be correct, but the narrative, when this information is presented outside of context, [when a false balance is presented], can become manipulative and fake.
Breaking news coverage is often just repeating: ‘this person said this, and that person said this’. ‘People in Crimea say these are Russian soldiers, and Putin says these are not Russian soldiers. You decide’. Well, we [the news consumers] can’t decide because we’re not in Crimea and we don’t know. The journalist’s job is to go and find out the name, the place, the story and present the proof that this is a Russian soldier and not leave the room for ambiguity — because it’s the ambiguity that corrodes and kills the truth.
The problem is there isn’t enough news to fill 24 hours. The whole idea of 24-hour news is bullshit. If we continue to practice it, we will continue to fill this space with noise. I really believe that noise is the new censorship because you just can’t punch through it. That’s how we lose the truth.”
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What good journalism means today
“I hate terms like slow journalism or solutions journalism — it’s just fashion. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Existing journalistic standards are a pretty good guide for how to do it. What’s really broken are the distribution models. I think we can only get out of it if the governments regulate social media [and AI].
There are reasons to be optimistic. There are fantastic outlets doing amazing work in all the countries out there, and we have the digital information ecosystem to thank for that. Coda wouldn’t exist without the internet. We're not alone; there's a whole community of nonprofit newsrooms and for-profit newsrooms that are doing fantastic journalism. There is more good journalism today than there was before.
However, as journalists, we are no longer the gatekeepers. In that, our role has really changed. Zelenskyy doesn’t need us to tell his story, he tells it himself. So we need to rethink our role. The only meaningful role for us today is equipping our audiences with real understanding of what’s happening. You can do that only with the in-depth reporting, thoughtful reporting that AI cannot, at least yet, do. That kind of journalism has the future”.
Storytelling is essential for good journalism. The way we tell stories is important because what good is good journalism if it’s too boring to read? Obviously, journalism has to be rooted in fact, but it’s important to delight. You need to tell the story in a way that drags people in and takes your reader or your viewer or your listener on a real journey and sucks them in.”
LMF Talks — a series of public online and offline events in various formats (discussions, debates, lectures, masterclasses, film screenings with discussions, etc.), focused on the future. The future of Ukraine as part of Western civilization and Ukrainian media as part of the European and global media space. Stay tuned for announcements on our social media pages: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
This project is made possible with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy. If you have any questions or proposals for collaboration, please email us at info@lvivmediaforum.com.
Photo: Olenka Odlezhuk. Text: Anton Protsiuk.