Seriously, that is what you are claiming now after all your complaining about Oryx being biased, your story changes a lot depending on your own biases.
BTW this is also the guy they trotted out when russia was trying to claim the UA shot down flight MH17 rather than russian sponsored rebels using russian equipment.
I dont want to derail the thread and we have been asked by moderators to keep the discussion about Oryx out of this thread.
If this is seen as derailing I apologize and would ask the Moderators to remove the post.
What seperates the scientific historian from the enthusiast is the ability to study, critique and Interpret a source in order to draw own conlusions. Today this skills are needed by everyone who wants to navigate the informationsphere.
First step in evaluating infromation is to study the source
- what informations are present, what informations are absent?
Oryx:
- we see a russian tank in a field.
- we do not see if the tank is crewed, If the field is in ukraine or are able to evaluate which year the picture was taken or what it's source is.
PL:
- we can see he is in Mariopol, we can say this video was recorded in the Last 3 weeks and with additional sources can propably say with some confidence on what day and even at what time it was taken. We have a vast amount of context already that was absent from the picture oryx presents as source.
- We can see that he is transported in an car marked with a redcross while accomoanies by armed personal clearly not on a medical Mission.
- We can see a lot of Battle damage, we can locate the streets they walk and say they are clearly unser russian control. We can see some Interactions between civis and him.
- we do not see the alleged arrest He talks about. But is that realy the primary question we ask when we study this source? "Was a man arrested in Mariopol"? I dont think so.
Next step is source criticism.
How reliable is the source? To establish the reliability of a source there are quite some principles: objective > narative, primary > secondary > tertiary, the closer the source is to the event the more reliable it is.
- Oryx does not provide us with his primary source. We therefore cannot reasonably investigate his claims.
- we know that it's a secondary source though and we know a secondary source is less reliable then a primary source.
- to make matters worse it's one dependent on narrative. Narative is Always less reliable then an objective / relic. But once again, as Oryx dosnt provide his source we cant even qualify this photo with the added classifictaion as a secondary source
- In the end Oryx adds it's own narative when he categorizes the picture and therefore _creates_ his own context.
Once again: narative (his claim what the photo Shows) is less reliable then objective evidence (the Photo itself) which in conlusion represents secondary / tertiary evidence which is less reliable then a primary source. So we already See how far away we are from counting this as a reliable source.
- next, what can we say about oryx? He is biased. A biased source, you guessed it: is less reliable then a neutral one.
So inconclusion: we cant take this as a reliable source for what is claimed to be shown on the picture. The evidence is not there.
PL:
- The videofotage is a primary source on its own which can be analyzed Independently from the added narative.
This makes it a rather reliable source for specific questions (auch as: was this street under russian control at X hour on Day Y)
- We do know that PL is at least heavily biased. Therefore we know we have to apply scroutiny when looking at the footage.
- We know because of his biase the narative is propably very questeniable and shouldnt be used as a foundation for a broader conlusion without Independent sources that are supporting his claims.
- He is unreliable. Yet, this only means we have to expect that his footage ist edidet:
The next step is Interpretation of the source.
We combine the study and the criticism and come up with out own conlusion what the source proves / indicates and what Not.
Here we See in the case of the picturer Tank, oryx dosnt Proof or indicate anything. It's a completly worthless data point.
In case of the Video from PL we cant take it as evidence that the locals are not unfriendly towards the russians only because his footage dosnt show it. We have to asume that because of his biase he might omit certain footage. We can however see it as a reliable source that certain areas of the city are under russian control as the soldiers walk around without harassment. We can also use it as a source for the destruction of civilian infrastructure etc.
I think you get the methodology and why I dont like oryx. From a scientific point of view he is far worse thene Wikipedia and everyone knows Wikipedia is not a credible source. I dont trust PL but hisw footage contains enough information to actualy draw your own conclusions seperate from his added narative.
The principles of source criticism are long standing and can be applied to the reporting on current events.
I hope this somehwat clears up why I think PL footage has value and why it's Not based on "my bias".
This kind of thinking should always be applied, especially when it comes to information so elusive as the once that are discussed in this topic.
@GermanHerman EDIT: Warning removed. Given in error. My apologies.
Ngatimozart.