Dozens of reporters on the floor have covered the war between Russia and Ukraine since it began last February, yet some social media users claim a BBC journalist pretended to be at the front.
“The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen pretends to be on the front line, while one watches, probably bewildered,” reads an October 5 Facebook post that has been shared more than 3600 times in two days.
The message includes a collage of 4 photographs, from one of Bowen’s video reports from Ukraine. Two of the photographs show Bowen’s falsehood on the ground, wearing a “press” bulletproof vest and holding a microphone. The other two are panoramic versions of the same shot showing the status of a woman in the distance who appears to be staring at Bowen.
Other versions of it won thousands of shares.
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But a review of the full video from which the footage was taken shows that Bowen was reporting from the front lines of the war. The Ukrainian city where the footage was filmed was under constant bombardment by Russian forces during the first weeks of the war.
USA TODAY reached out to users who shared the complaint for comment. One user responded but provided no evidence that Bowen “pretended” to be attacked.
The screenshots were taken from a BBC video report on March 6 in Irpin, Ukraine. The text accompanying the video describes the city as being on the front lines of the war and notes that a woman and her two children were killed by mortar fire as they tried to flee.
The barely four-minute video shows civilians fleeing the city, which is a suburb of the country’s capital, Kiev, while artillery can be heard landing in the area.
Seconds before the component of the video from which the screenshots were captured, other Bowen people can be seen crouching as explosions are heard in the distance.
The New York Times described Irpin as “one of the most fiercely contested areas” during the early weeks of the war.
More: Ukraine regains territory in east and south as counteroffensives continue
One of the front pages of the newspaper at the time featured a photo of the woman and her two children killed by the mortar attack on the streets of Irpin.
In an Oct. 6 tweet, Bowen said the claim he claimed to be on the front lines of the war was “totally false” and an insult to Ukrainian refugees. The Associated Press, Full Fact and AFP Fact Check also debunked the claim.
Ukrainian forces recaptured Irpin from Russia in March, USA TODAY reports.
Based on our research, we compared FALSE the claim that a symbol shows a BBC journalist claiming to be on the front line in Ukraine. A review of the full video from which the footage is drawn shows that Bowen does indeed report on the front line.
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