Journalistic Identities and War Reporting: Coverage of the 2008 Russian-Georgian War in the Russian Press

The article analyzes the coverage of the Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 in three leading Russian newspapers, the official Rossijskaja gazeta, the tabloid Komsomol 'skaja pravda, and the oppositional Novaja gazeta. A total of 247 articles on the war written in the three papers between 8 and 14 August 2008 were examined; in addition, seven journalists who had worked as war reporters in the war zone were interviewed. To the war reporters in all three newspapers their professional identity as journalists was clearly important. They were proud of the work they did, and reflected on their role as mediators of information to the public. They defined the task of the journalist in basically the same way: it meant giving a balanced and objective account of what actually happened. Even so, they covered the war in very different ways. To a large extent, the journalistic culture and political sympathies of the various papers determined what the correspondents "saw" on the ground.