“AUTHORITIES confirm they’ve made progress in an investigation into the finances of anti-corruption activist Vitaliy Shabunin,” drones the anchor of an American television network, News24, in a clip recently shared across Ukrainian social media. There is only one problem: there is no News24, and the anchor is not a journalist but an actor hired through a freelance site, Fiverr.com. “I assumed the video was a prank his friends were playing on him,” says the actor, Michael-John Wolfe.
The “fake news” bulletin was an illustration of the increasingly hostile environment facing anti-corruption activists, journalists and reformist officials in Ukraine. “I cannot escape the feeling that we’re living through a counter-revolution,” writes Yaroslav Hrytsak, a historian at Ukrainian Catholic University. This is partly a backlash against reforms, particularly the new National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). By allowing...Continue reading
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