• On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine sent shockwaves around the world.
  • The media sphere seized on this "unthinkable" news. The week after the invasion, 137,500 quotes from the war in Ukraine flooded newspapers, televisions and radio stations in France.
  • More than a year after the beginning of the conflict, however, the interest of the world and the French has waned. And, gradually, the war in Ukraine has established itself as one subject, among others.

"The unthinkable" for Courrier International and Libération, the "Choice of the worst" for Humanity, "War in Europe" for La Croix. Other newspapers have chosen for their front pages the photograph of a bloodied woman with a face covered with bandages, such as the Corriere della Serra or the Daily Mail. The media coverage of the invasion of Ukraine was a reflection of the emotion of the world, this February 24, 2022. Because Vladimir Putin's decision had left Europe, and even the world, haggard.

But after the shock, more than a year after the beginning of this invasion in the center of the old continent, the interest of Europeans seems to gradually weaken. The Google Trend tool shows the huge interest that this invasion aroused through Internet searches in February before rapidly decreasing. As early as the summer of 2022, the media monitoring organization Aday noted the decline in the number of references to the war in Ukraine in the French media space. Out of 3,000 press titles and 397 radio and television in France, references to the conflict fell from 137,500 citations in the week following the invasion to four times fewer in June 2022.

"A habituation of conflict"

"The outbreak of the conflict that was knocking on our doors on February 24, 2022 caused an emotional peak, a peak of fear, a peak of European involvement in this conflict. Then, there was a form of distancing, "notes Daphnée Rousseau, AFP reporter. The journalist was in Ukraine at the start of the Russian offensive when "the threat fell from the sky, from the earth and no place was sheltered". After the terror, "Europeans stopped being afraid of being affected by war in its military form. The threat is no longer perceived as direct, immediate or obvious," she explains. "The readership had a great thrill at the beginning of this war," adds the reporter.

But, gradually, "we are faced with a habituation of the conflict, the feeling that we have become so accustomed that we can perhaps talk about something else," decrypts Mélina Huet, a reporter for LCI's international service. "When Kiev suffered its first drone attack, it was frightening. We hardly talk about it today," says Daphnée Rousseau. On the ground, the conflict lost momentum after a few months, when Russian forces withdrew to the east and south of the country. The risk of Ukraine falling in a few days, a few weeks, has receded until it disappears. Little by little, the positions of the belligerents froze. "I have the impression that as soon as a conflict freezes, interest also fades," says Mélina Huet. "When you look at the coverage in 2014, there was an interest at the time of the war in Donbass and then the annexation of Crimea and then we forgot for eight years. It took the large-scale invasion for the France to remember that people were dying in the trenches at the gates of Europe," recalls the LCI journalist. A frequent phenomenon in media coverage of conflicts.

Try to "find the balance" without a "blind spot"

"It's a law of the day. We saw this with the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina or, more recently, the war in Syria," says Daphnée Rousseau; who adds that the latter "got bogged down too". However, some events in Ukraine still receive excellent media coverage, such as the Ukrainian counter-offensive in which Kiev recaptured Kherson in November or the one year since the Russian invasion. "There was a big rout for the one year, all the newsrooms mobilized. Before that, there was a permanent presence of all the newsrooms on site, but afterwards, there was a decrease in the teams sent there," says Mélina Huet.

Lives - those articles live from online newspapers - are fed with less eagerness: whereas at the beginning of the war, there was sometimes one post per minute, it now happens that two hours pass without anything being added. A drop in speed that is also explained by current events. "There is the economic crisis, a very heavy social and national news, but also other international crises such as Iran or Sudan," lists Daphnée Rousseau. "We must find the right balance and not think that one news item must disappear in favor of another," says Mélina Huet. And so, talk about Ukraine as pension reform. And avoid the pitfall. Because, she notes, "there is always a risk, from the moment newsrooms lose interest in a conflict, that it will become a blind spot in the news".

"There is no such thing as zero risk" for reporters

Media coverage of the conflict exists primarily because journalists go into the field and risk their lives to report the facts of the war. On Tuesday 9 May, France-Presse journalist Arman Soldin was killed by a rocket attack near Bakhmut. In total, at least 11 reporters, fixers or drivers of journalists have been killed since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Daphnée Rousseau was one of the young journalist's teammates. "There is no such thing as zero risk. It is an earthquake, there are huge repercussions. But we will return with the caution that is ours, "she says.

"Unfortunately, there are conflicts all over the world. It is not because interest is shifting to Ukraine that these same journalists will not go to cover wars elsewhere in the world, "says Mélina Huet. For example, according to an estimate by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) in 2019, more than 690 members of the press have died in Syria since the beginning of the conflicts. "We cannot afford to forget this conflict because there would be a lack of interest. This is an extremely important event that impacts millions of people in Ukraine and elsewhere," said Mélina Huet. Because it is a "global conflict with economic threats, major diplomatic battles and the emergence of the Wagner militia," says Daphnée Rousseau. A war that has not finished being told.

  • War in Ukraine
  • World
  • Russia
  • Journalism
  • Media
  • Bakhmut