Society not too picky about reliability of news reporting – military medic

Society remains rather infantile, perceiving events through sensationalized headlines and not willing to delve deeper.

This opinion was expressed by Iryna Tsybukh, a Ukrainian military servicewoman, who spoke with the Kramatorsk Station project.

In her opinion, consumers of information nowadays are not too picky about its reliability and tend to think in terms of headlines, trusting them right away.

"A society oversaturated with media fast food will always remain too emotional and superficial. We hear that we have changed a lot, grown a lot and become new since the full-scale invasion but I seriously doubt that. That’s because the childishness of society manifests itself in what we speak the language of headline and decide we can pull out just pieces of content. And we pull them out because they are presented as unique," suggests the Ukrainian military.

According to Tsybukh, such an “infantile attitude” to information opens up significant opportunities for enemy psyops.

"As long as people feel the need to communicate in terms of headlines and believe those who speak this language, which is accessible to whatever level consciousness people have, Russia will retain a chance to prevail. Because in reality, it takes a lot of effort to resist. And headlines are not about effort – they are basically fast food. That is why it is so important to cultivate the need to delve deeper, to look for the original source," the medic emphasized.

Iryna Tsybukh is a producer and project manager in civilian life. Before the full-scale invasion, she worked at the UA:PBC public broadcaster. She has traveled to Donbas as a military paramedic since 2015. Today, she is a combat medic with the Hospitaliers volunteer battalion, engaged in medical evacuation of soldiers from hot spots along the front line. In 2023, President Zelensky awarded Tsybukh with the Order of Merit.

The Kramatorsk Station project is a series of interviews with the Ukrainian military. Its main goal is to show personal life stories through a frank conversation, as well as to give answers to Russia’s fake stories spun as part of psyops around the topics of Ukraine’s Army and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The hosts are Kostiantyn Liberov and Vlada Liberova, documentary photographers who have been documenting events in Ukraine since the first days of the full-scale invasion.