Comment by micwag | Hacker News Reader

Comment by micwag | Hacker News Reader

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I try give every news outlet the chance to prove their merits. The linked article writes very detailed how their enemies have an agenda, but gets very small lipped why The GRAYZONE should be considered reputable.

So checked their articles and found this recent one about the US-Ukraine leak: https://thegrayzone.com/2023/04/07/leaked-documents-us-nato-...

"Neither the New York Times nor the “military analysts” it cited explain how the documents were altered, or why they have the appearance of tampering."

Thankfully they provide the leaked document (The black box "TOTAL ASSESSED LOSSES"): https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04...

And the numbers are VERY poorly photoshopped: The doctored text does not align with the rest. Character position, height and spacing suddenly change (look at the "71.5k" alone). The russian aircraft losses have a numbers photoshopped out (from "7x fighter/bomber; 8x rotary wing" to "7 fighter/bomber; 8 rotary wing".

So would agree with Wikipedia, that The GRAYZONE is NOT reliable.

Continue your quote - What's the very next line, in the same paragraph even?

> ... because the leaked documents have arrived in the form of photographs of printed documents, rather than original files, the possibility of forgery or alteration must be considered.

And you may have misread that other quote you posted: It's saying the documents "have the appearance of tampering."

They also questioned the authenticity multiple times, making it very clear that authenticity had not been confirmed:

> Though they resemble those described by the Times, we can not confirm their authenticity.

And again, further on:

> If the documents were partially faked, were they disseminated to help Russia advance its public relations goals, perhaps by minimizing their casualty numbers or inflating those of their foe? They certainly would not be fooling anyone at the Department of Defense, since they obviously have the original files on hand.

... Looks to me like they reported the news accurately, making no claims about authenticity whatsoever.

The only significant difference I can see between that article and CNN's reporting of the same day [0] is that Grayzone actually showed the documents.

0 - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/07/politics/ukraine-document...

There is no "possibility of forgery", "questioned authenticity" or "not confirmed", the figures I mentioned are 100% badly photoshopped. But that article tries very hard to introduce a "maybe those numbers are real", e.g at the end:

> There is also the possibility that they are one hundred percent authentic. If so, Ukraine and its Western patrons may have more serious problems than a few leaked documents.

Again, the figures are badly photoshopped, they are one hundred percent NOT authentic.

There is also the following paragraph that tries to lend the photoshopped figures credibility:

> Perhaps the most notable piece of information contained in the leaked documents relates to military death tolls, with Ukrainian and Russian losses estimated at about a 4:1 ratio. According to one document, 71,500 Ukrainian troops have been killed in action. That figure is close to the 100,000 KIA’s cited by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a November 2022 speech, before her comments were retracted. It also tracks closely with statements by one of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky’s top advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, who told the BBC in June of last year that Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200 soldiers per day (200 deaths per day over the course of 370 days between the launch of Russia’s military operation and the date of the documents would total 74,000.)

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