Talk:List of journalists killed during the Russo-Ukrainian War

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Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 21:30, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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The airstrike on Kyiv TV Tower

Created by Tamzin (talk). Self-nominated at 03:37, 18 March 2022 (UTC).[reply]

  • @Tamzin: looks like this one's been sitting around for a bit, so I'll pick it up. New enough (at time of nomination), long enough, neutral, and plagiarism-free (foreign-language citations notwithstanding, agf); small sourcing issue below. ALTs 0 and 1 are cited and interesting, the video is freely licensed, used in the article, and while not clear at 100px, it isn't played at 100px either, so that doesn't apply. QPQ not required for first-time nominator; we're almost there. Welcome to DYK, Tamzin! :D theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 01:11, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Little has been independently reported about Shakirov. this one's uncited at the end of a paragraph; we've had some problems in the past with treating lack of evidence as evidence of lack, it may stray into OR territory. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 01:11, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      @Theleekycauldron: That was part of my attempt, based on discussion on talk, to not state anything in the encyclopedia's voice, not even to state with certainty that Shakirov existed (while at the same time not getting into the OR of saying "There's a nonzero chance that he was made up as part of a propaganda effort"). It's always hard to walk the line between V/RS and OR/SYNTH when acknowledging sourcing issues, and I added the line in question after a pretty exhaustive dive into English sources, followed by Ymblanter looking through Russian sources, and then me looking through machine-translated Ukrainian sources. I thus felt it fair under WP:SYNTHNOTSUMMARY and WP:NOTJUSTANYSYNTH to say little has been reported about him. But I see your point. What would you think of something like The BBC reported Venediktova's claims but did not independently confirm them, referencing [2]? Maybe that gets the same point home without the same issues. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 02:03, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Theleekycauldron: Courtesy ping that I've updated the hooks in light of the killing of Mantas Kvedaravičius. There was some discussion on talk as to whether he counts as a journalist for our purposes, but I see the Committee to Protect Journalists as authoritative here. Not sure what the etiquette is on who I update if I need to change the hook; do please let me know if it's something other than this. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 04:11, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Tamzin: should be all right if you leave a record on the nompage every time you update the hook—that way, the promoter can check with any modifications to the article since I ticked the nom and make sure the numbers check out. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 18:21, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure how to handle Shakirov[edit]

2003:df:671f:2e2e:1901:604:46f0:7b3 added Dilerbek Shakirov to this list, and I have duly updated things, but I'm left a bit unsure of the matter. All but two of the sources, reliable or otherwise, that I can find in English are simply repeating Iryna Venediktova's claim. The exceptions are this post from the Institute for Mass Information, which claims independent corroboration, and this post from the Press Emblem Campaign, which asserts he died but doesn't give any details. PEC isn't as prominent a journalist advocacy group as the likes of CPJ or RSF, and in the same post they say that a group that is 4/6 Ukrainian is "mostly from foreign countries", so I'm not putting that much stock in that... From what I've gleaned of the IMI, on the other hand, they seem like a reliable enough source for this sort of thing, but it's still noteworthy to me that there has been no significant coverage of Shakirov's death, in English or in Ukrainian. Spot-checking Google News results for Шакірова Ділєрбека, everything seems to be versions of the same article based on Venediktova's Facebook post. There's almost no mentions of him on Twitter in English (twitter.com/search?q=Dilerbek%20Shakirov), and even fewer in Ukrainian (twitter.com/search?q=Шакірова%20Ділєрбека). No obituaries, no interviews with people who knew him. Meanwhile a number of RS refer to Sakun as the first journalist killed in the full-scale invasion. CPJ lists Sakun but not Shakirov. PEC, as noted, lists Shakirov (and are whom I'm currently citing for the statement that he was the first killed), but they also list Viktor Dudar, a volunteer paratrooper who was not engaged in newsgathering at the time of his death (and, I will reiterate, they seem to think that 2 is more than half of 6).

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to handle this? Pinging Ymblanter just as a friendly name who's edited this article. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 05:20, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I checked Russian-language sources, and I do not see anything not relying on Venediktova's FB post. In addition, Shakirov was a local, and it was unclear whether he was on a mission as a journalist, or just a casualty of collateral damage. I would remove until we have any other sources.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:27, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've commented it out for now. If it turns out that his death was unrelated to news-gathering, but we get independent confirmation that he was a journalist, we could expand "Journalists killed while serving in the military" to something like "Journalists killed while not engaged in news-gathering" and add him there. Since a civilian journalist killed off the clock has as much a claim to be mentioned as most of the people in that section—probably moreso than a few whose claim to the title "journalist" is itself controversial. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 09:24, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also some international Sources, lists Shakirov as Journalist, so that i think he is related to the list. Sources are BBC & Reports Without Borders, they speaks from 7 journalists killed during the Conflict. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:df:671f:2e85:45ae:947e:2679:1cdb (talk) 18:20, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

BBC is attributing that to the Press Emblem Campaign without independent verification, and as I said, the PEC isn't giving any insight into the level of vetting they've done, and IMO doesn't have the same kind of stature as something like CPJ or RSF where I'd be inclined to just take their word for it that they're fully vetting the claims they put out. Not to harp on one point, but again, in the relevant report from them, they say that two is more than half of six... That doesn't suggest a very high degree of care put into accuracy by their press-release team. As to RSF... Where are you seeing that? As far as I can tell, the first death on that list is Sakun's. The interactive map doesn't show any deaths in Kherson Oblast, and for sourcing links to their Ukraine page, which in turn links to their "barometer" page, which does not list Shakirov under "Journalists Killed", "Citizen Journalists Killed", nor "Media Assistans Killed". -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 19:45, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But there are enough confirmations, including Interfax UKobozrevatel, Infobae, another European source, who describes him & lists him, is this swedish Newspaper, Odessa Online, Nik News source — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:df:671f:2e85:291b:8789:7bc3:fd5f (talk • contribs) 00:56, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So, let's divide them up:
  • Interfax, odessa.online, and Niknews are all still recycling that Facebook press release form Venediktov.
  • Infobae and Journalisten include him in a list of journalists killed without any details beyoned what Venediktov gave, or clarification on their sourcing.
  • Obozovratel is recycling this Facebook post from the IMI, which excludes Shakirov from "five journalists were killed in the line of duty" and lists him under "Three more journalists were killed as participants in hostilities or as a result of Russian shelling".
  • Also, the IMI post and Journalisten both mention the death of Viktor Dedov, another apparent lower-profile journalist death, also discussed by the European Federation of Journalists here. The IMI had discussed Dedov in a blog post the day before, citing this Facebook post from Dedov's widow on the 19th. The IMI Facebook fost also includes him in the "participants in hostilities or as a result of Russian shelling".
Based on the above, I'm more-or-less satisfied that there are real Ukrainian journalists named Dilerbek Shakirov and Viktor Dudev and that they were killed by Russian fire. I'm not convinced they were engaged in news-gathering in the time, and rather am persuaded by the IMI post to think these were civilians killed by Russians who happened to be journalists. Tragic, still, and worth mentioning since it's in RS, but I would argue these should be treated separately, like the military journalists.
As such, what I would suggest is that we add a "Civilian journalists killed outside the line of duty" section after the "Journalists killed while serving in the military" section. Thoughts? @Ymblanter, do you agree with this reading of the sources? -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 07:27, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is fine, but we can not do it in Wikipedia voice. The information of the death of Shakirov, for example, must be attributed to Venediktova, since we do not have any independent coverage, and she is of course a party of the conflict.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:41, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated the article accordingly. Let me know what you think. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 10:06, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Redundancy[edit]

I removed the 5 sentence subsection of a person who is not a journalist and was NOT KILLED, because the title of this page is "List of journalists killed during the Russo-Ukrainian War".

User: Tamzin reverted this edit and also reverted my subsequent edit CREATE SUBSECTIONS FOR EACH JOURNALIST AS IN PRIOR SECTIONS without discussion here on the page. If I did the same we d end up edit warring.

Tamzin, you should take a look at pages which are called lists. They are literally table-lists, and not duplicating information ("Further information...." for example is not necessary, if you are inserting a wikilink) as you are doing here. This article looks bloated and cluttered.

I do not agree with your keeping of the subsection "Legal proceedings against Nadiya Savchenko"- First, Deaths of Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin already have the same subsection, second she already has her own wikipage with the same subsection , and third there is no need to mention her in detail in this "list" anyway- this is a list.

You exhibit WP:Ownership-like behavior. --Wuerzele (talk) 20:52, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wuerzele: Because your signature did not link to your userpage or talkpage, I did not get your ping (a quirk of how pings work). I'm not sure why that happened—this says you use the default signature—but regardless, that's why I'm only replying now. Please do make sure to just sign with ~~~~, though.
I'm not at all trying to claim ownership of this article. I created it, and have been the only person actively maintaining it, but I've been very excited when other users have shown up to add new information or, in several instances, correct my mistakes. Your edit is the only one I've reverted, and I did so because its summary didn't make sense: Nothing about the article implied that Savchenko was a journalist who was killed. I figured you had misunderstood the point of her being mentioned, which is why after reverting your edit I broke "legal proceedings against" into separate subsections. I understand now that you feel the material is excessive, and so will address that. Oh, just to be clear though, I did not revert your "CREATE SUBSECTIONS" edit. Those subsections are still right there.
I can assure you I've seen my fair share of list articles. The guiding documents on lists like these are Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists and Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. They allow for a variety of formats. Table lists are useful for many things; I've created two before, List of invasions and occupations of Ukraine and H.R. 1. There are plenty of lists, though, that take the form of a littany of mini-articles; for instance, see anything in Category:Lists of minor league baseball players. Or take a look at a featured list like List of United States Navy enlisted rates, which makes limited use of tables but is mostly prose.
Having established that a prose list of short biographies is permissible, then, there is the question of excessive detail. Given that this is a fairly short list (although, morally, far too long), I would see the acceptable length of each entry to be around 100 words, 150 for incidents that killed two people. Currently, the only section that would exceed that is, just barely, Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova at 157. When summarizing a person's death in 100-150 words, if that person's death led to legal proceedings (a rarity in deaths of warzone journalists), that seems worth devoting some words to. If you disagree, I'd love to discuss that. But I do not think it's accurate to say that every list is supposed to be a terse table. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 01:10, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just to follow up, I have trimmed most of the hatnotes, as I agree they were excessive. Now it's just inline link if there's a biography, hatnote link if there's a "Death of" article (or in one case a relevant section of another article about the fatal incident). The only situation where both would be appropriate, I now think, is if there were both a biography and a "Death of" article / section of another article. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 02:57, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mantas Kvedaravičius[edit]

@Kober and Saluzzo53: Do any reliable sources refer to Mantas Kvedaravičius as a journalist? Those I've found refer to him as a documentarian but not a journalist.

If no such RS can be found, he should probably be removed from this list. I've added his name to Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War § Foreign civilians and journalists 2 and if someone creates a List of artists killed in the Russo-Ukrainian War (which I know User:Boud has suggested), that could include him, as well as overlap with Brent Renaud and potentially any photojournalists who also did non-journalistic photography; looks like Maks Levin might qualify for that.

An alternative would be expanding this list to be about journalists, media workers, and documentarians. (I don't think the page's title and section headings would need to change, since it's okay to use "journalist" more broadly there; we already do so by including Voloshin, who is more precisely categorized as a media worker. Instead it would mean changes like "At least 14 civilian journalists, media workers, and documentarians") My resistance to that is that it might border on OR, and could lead to the accusation that this list is inflating the numbers.

A third option would be a "documentarians" sublist, but that could get messy categorization-wise because of Renaud and Levin.

I welcome y'all's thoughts. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 22:45, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Noting I've made this temporary compromise change (similar to Option 2 above) for the time being, just to make sure we don't have any errors in the article while we discuss. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 22:52, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, there are no sources that say that he is a journalist. I suggest that we expand the article to include journalists, media workers, and documentarians. We could title it to be something like "List of media workers killed during the Russian invasion against Ukraine". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saluzzo53 (talk • contribs) 00:30, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Saluzzo53: Well, this from CPJ makes me comfortable listing Kvedaravičius as a journalist, no need for a rename. In particular since they're calling him "the seventh journalist killed", not just "a journalist killed"—skipping numbers is one trick sometimes used to get around awkward ambiguities in who counts as a journalist (see this list's latter two sections). A Google search shows some news outlets calling him a journalist as well now. So I say we should include him, probably with an explanatory note somewhere in there. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 02:38, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Great, that works for me! Saluzzo53 (talk) 03:28, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The National Union of Journalist's claim of 20 (now 21) dead in the invasion[edit]

Analyzing this NSJU post to see which entries can be verified for the purposes of this list. Where there isn't a clear standardized transliteration in English-language sources, I'm using those from The Insider.

  1. П’єр Закжевськи == Pierre Zakrzewski,  Already listed
  2. Олександра Кувшинова == Aleksandra Kuvshynova,  Already listed
  3. Олександр Литкін == Aleksandr Lytkin Can't find sources
  4. Павло Лі == Pavlo Li, a/k/a Pasha Lee, Can't find sources calling him a journalist or media worker. Another good case for a List of artists killed during the Russo-Ukrainian War, though.
  5. Сергій Пущенко == Sergei Pushchenko Can't find reliable sources—mentioned in this not-very-reliable-looking source, which doesn't call him a journalist
  6. Євген Сакун == Yevhenii Sakun,  Already listed
  7. Брент Ентоні Рено == Brent Renaud,  Already listed
  8. Оксана Бауліна == Oksana Baulina,  Already listed
  9. Ділєрбек Шакіров == Dilerbek Shakirov,  Already listed
  10. Віктор Дєдов == Viktor Dedov,  Already listed
  11. Віктор Дудар == Viktor Dudar,  Already listed
  12. Лілія Гумянова == Liliya Gumyanova Gray X symbolNg Don't think she qualifies—teacher of journalism, but not a journalist or media worker; could see adding a one-sentence "Also killed was" mention at the top of "outside the line of duty" though?
  13. Юрій Олійник == Yury Oleynik, plus Added to military section
  14. Олег Якунін == Oleg Yakunin, plus Added to military section
  15. Максим Левін == Maks Levin,  Already listed
  16. Мантас Кведаравічус == Mantas Kvedaravičius,  Already listed
  17. Сергій Заїковський == Sergei Zaikovsky Can't find sources
  18. Денис Котенко == Denis Kotenko Gray X symbolNg Don't think he qualifies—IMI, which is among the more liberal sources as to whom it calls a journalist and is quite vocally pro-Ukrainian, calls Kotenko a "spokesman" for the Ministry of Veterans, as well as something that Google translates as "employee of the press service" (see also [3]). So far I haven't added anyone to the military section who I couldn't find reliable sources individually calling a journalist, and I haven't included Anna Samelyuk, press secretary to Alexei Mozgovoi, who was killed in his assassination. So I tend toward not including Kotenko, unless RS start calling him explicitly a journalist (not just listing him in recycled lists of journalists).
  19. Євген Баль == Yevgeny Bal, Rather confused—this fairly reliable-seeming French source quotes a few people calling him a journalist, and refers to him as a journalist in its own voice at one point, but, despite discussing his life a fair bit, doesn't mention anything about journalism that I can see. Not sure what to make of that. It's a recent report, so might just have to wait. plus Added, now on CPJ list 07:45, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
  20. Роман Нежиборець == Roman Nezhyborets, plus Added as "ambiguous circumstances" (expanding the previous "outside the line of duty" list in scope slightly)

The next day the NSJU reported the death of Zaroslav Zamoysky. Since there's details there and no dispute that he was a journalist or media worker, I've plus Added him as well as "ambiguous circumstances".

Would appreciate any thoughts, especially as to the 'd ones. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 19:57, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Gonzalo Lira[edit]

I've removed Gonzalo Lira. He was neither a journalist nor was he killed by Ukrainian authorities. He died because of an illness. Whether it was due to mistreatment, or his chain-smoking and anti-vax positions, is unknown. He therefore does not belong here. BeŻet (talk) 17:59, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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