(FiveNation.com)- Reuters published an article about the Ukraine conflict that featured a cover photo that raised some eyebrows. The media outlet chose a picture of soldiers armed with paintball guns to accompany a recent news story about an alleged assault by the Ukrainian military in the Sumy region.
The picture depicts men clad in military garb and armed with weapons taking a defensive crouching position. Upon closer inspection of the photograph, the men are armed with paintball guns.
Twitter users agreed that it was a ridiculous idea for insurgents to defend themselves against an aggressive foreign invasion by using paintball guns, something the leftwing Reuters would not pick up on. Weapons are just not their area of expertise.
People on the right recognized the ridiculousness of the picture immediately, and the onslaught of ridicule on Twitter commenced.
Naturally butthurt, Reuters stepped in to “fact-check.” They, of course, chose to fact-check a strawman argument that very few people were making.
Rather than take the “L” and admit they made a dumb image choice for their article, they did battle with a small percentage of people who idiotically said on Twitter that the picture was proof the war was staged.
Reuters said that on April 15, 2022, a photo of soldiers in Ukraine was taken during a training simulation. The image, which Reuters tweeted in May, is not proof that the war in Ukraine is a hoax, as some have claimed.
They said that on May 16, 2022, they shared a file image of the Ukrainian training exercise on Twitter, along with a link to a Reuters report headlined “Ukraine says it has repelled Russian incursion in Sumy region.” Users shared a screenshot of the Reuters tweet, implying that the Ukrainian conflict was fabricated or staged.
In their “fact-check,” they included a few tweets from conspiracy theorists-
“This is amazing!!” one user wrote on Facebook after sharing a screenshot of the tweet. A Russian incursion was thwarted by Ukrainian border guards… Wait… Is that a paintball gun? Allow people to sleep if they haven’t realized that we’ve been lied to for decades.”
“This entire “war” seems like a globally staged event.”
Of course, Reuters never let on that they were pig-piled on Twitter for choosing a benign picture of a training exercise to depict the “horrors of war.”
The ministry of truth was not available for comment.
