The photos, which were taken in the first weeks of the Russian invasion, have hung ever since then – side by side – on the premises of the Starlight Media television group. They depict journalists working from darkly-lit makeshift shelters, at a time when Russian forces were only 20 kilometers from the center of the capital, Kyiv.

On Friday, March 8, the media conglomerate's communications manager pointed to the portrait of a man sitting at a school desk. She explained that it was Orest Drymalovsky, a star presenter of Starlight's ICTV channel, who had announced his mobilization to the Ukrainian army in early February, live on air. "A powerful signal for our audience," said Yana Honcharenko with a hint of pride.

This announcement was all the more powerful as it was made in the context of the United News Telemarathon, a major tool in the information war waged by the Ukrainian authorities. For more than two years now, teams from six channels have been jointly producing and simultaneously broadcasting identical news content – 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The initiative was initially conceived by journalists as a way of maintaining the country's cohesion against Russian attempts at destabilization via social media, before being passed into law by presidential decree in March 2022.

"While, at the start of the invasion, the production of the 'marathon' was a unifying factor and was watched by half the country, the situation has now changed," said Svitlana Ostapa, head of the supervisory board of the Suspilne public television and radio broadcasting group.

Representatives of channels linked to opposition groups (Espresso.tv, 5 Kanal and Priamyi), which were sidelined at the outset of the "telemarathon" before being excluded from the national system of digital video broadcasting (DVB-T2) in April 2022 − thereby losing 40% of their audience − have accused the authorities of taking control of the country's media. Several human rights organizations, and Ukrainian civil society more broadly, have recently called for the return of plurality in the country's news channels.

Above all, confidence in these programs, as measured by opinion polls, has been plummeting among the Ukrainian population. "The term 'telemarathon' has become synonymous with excessive positive propaganda reporting on victories, while the situation on the front lines is worsening," said Otar Dovzhenko, an official from the NGO Lviv Media Forum.

"In reality, that's not exactly true," he immediately qualified, "because the telemarathon doesn't systematically broadcast such positive propaganda. Rather, it's seen as a communication tool for the authorities, one that society, it's true, doesn't entirely trust." Of the six broadcasters participating in the telemarathon, the expert considered the teams at Suspilne, 1+1 Media Group and Starlight to be "professional and responsible." On the other hand, he noted that the "Rada TV" parliamentary channel – which has stopped broadcasting plenary sessions of the Ukrainian Parliament since the start of the invasion – and the My-Ukraina ("We are Ukraine") channel "focus excessively on government representatives and on building up their positive image."

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