Today, I found yet another agency-published paper in which NewsVoice is mentioned. It is called ”Ukraine and the new ways of information warfare, social media, war reporting and disinformation.” In this paper, Andreas Widholm and Gunnar Nygren complain that NewsVoice in 2022 spread alleged disinformation that the Ukraine war is a proxy war against Russia.
Andreas Widholm is an associate professor of journalism at Stockholm University’s Department of Media Studies. His research focuses on global news production, media and culture, digital political communication, war and conflict reporting, sources and source criticism, and alternative media.
Gunnar Nygren, born in 1954 in Landvetter, is a Swedish journalist, media researcher, and author. He is a professor emeritus of journalism at Södertörn University.
The paper published on the website of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (msb.se/en) states:
”In June 2022, just over four months after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the alternative media site Newsvoice published an article entitled “The information bubble in Ukraine.” The article claims that Russian forces are “grinding down Ukrainian resistance,” despite years of Ukrainian military training and military aid from the West.
The writer wonders why the Swedish people, politicians, and journalists are completely incapable of seeing the situation from any perspective other than the politically correct one.
The answer given is clear: it is not Russia that is responsible for the war, but Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis. “In addition to horse-trading based on climate propaganda,” the writer argues, we are now also being forced to ‘pay for the Western economic elite’s desire to break down Russia to gain access to the country’s raw materials.’
The article views the mainstream media as instruments of influence controlled by global financial interests that want to ”conceal the real purpose of the war.”
”Newsvoice was far from alone in spreading this type of article during the first years of the war. For over a decade in Sweden, there has been a plethora of alternative media outlets that share a similar critical attitude toward traditional journalism.” / Andreas Widholm and Gunnar Nygren
The article is an opinion piece by Lasse Malmgren, a freelance writer. Apparently, Gunnar Nygren and Andreas Widholm can’t stand opinion articles. The thing is that Malmgren was right. Most independent geopolitical analysts concur that the war is a geopolitical proxy war started by NATO and a Western alliance. NewsVoice has published extensively on this topic.
Also, NewsVoice is not a right-wing outlet, as the authors claim. If it must be positioned on that political scale, it is more oriented to the left and middle of the spectrum. In reality, we work beyond that box, hence the independence.
By Torbjorn Sassersson, editor
References
- NewsVoice: The information bubble surrounding Ukraine obscures the real purpose of the war (the original article in Swedish)
- Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency: Ukraine and the new ways of information warfare, social media, war reporting and disinformation”
- SU.se: Andreas Widholm, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor
- SH.se: Gunnar Nygren, Professor
