Fake news: how to distinguish truth from false

During the May 11, 2014 referendum in Krasnoarmiiysk (named Pokrovsk after the decommunization), armed soldiers from the Dnipro Battalion of the National Guard of Ukraine entered the town. What happened next shocked the present - one person died and another was injured because of shooting. Afterwards the soldiers left the buildings of the Executive Committee and police department. There was a long investigation, as a result the guilty Ukrainian soldier was sent to prison. Spreading misinformation by contrasting political sides is the reason that the circumstances of this incident even now remain unclear for some people. In this essay I will show how this story was used to turn ordinary people to different sides, specifically how different sources of information from different countries covered this case. Russian resources, for instance lenta. ru, considered this case another confirmation of the Ukrainian cruelty, aggression and a manifestation of Nazism and nationalism. Of course, lenta. ru insisted that this referendum was the true will-expression of all inhabitants of the Donetsk region. Ukrainian news resources at first insisted that an investigation was underway and the true information was unknown. The Ministry of Defense officially stated that the Dnipro Battalion didn’t leave Dnipropetrovsk region and could not attend the referendum. Nevertheless, later, after numerous evidence that the Dnipro was still present during the referendum on the main square of Krasnoarmiiysk, the Ukrainian authorities had to admit their guilt. The man was shot by accident, according to the testimony. Local news websites were neutral but mentioned that, according to local residents, a shot was fired by a soldier. The BBC, like the entire Western world as a whole, adhered to a pro-Ukrainian position, calling this referendum illegitimate, and calling their participants separatists. I tried to show a huge difference in providing information by sources. I believe that since a resident of the city suffered at the hands of a Ukrainian soldier, there were more separatist-minded citizens.