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- A lie without salvation: a journalist told how he came up with fakes for foreign media
A lie without salvation: a journalist told how he came up with fakes for foreign media
A scandal related to the publication of fake materials in the Russian opposition media is gaining momentum in the media environment. For almost a year, a freelance journalist under the pseudonym Dmitry Shishkin has been supplying foreign media outlets with completely made-up stories. Four of them were nominated for the Editorial Board Award, established by businessman Boris Zimin (listed by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in the register of foreign agents) to support "independent" media. Izvestia managed to find out who was hiding behind the pseudonym Shishkin, talk to him and find out how he managed to publish materials with fictitious facts.
Dmitry Shishkin's Self-exposure
The scandal began to gain momentum on December 4 after the publication of a user of the social network X under the pseudonym Dima. In his posts, he described how he deliberately supplied fictional materials to several opposition media outlets: Novaya Tab (the site is blocked in the Russian Federation by the decision of Roskomnadzor), Echo (the company that owns Radio Echo GmbH is included in the list of undesirable organizations by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation), The Devil and The Moscow Times (both publications entered by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in the register of foreign agents). At least four such falsified texts were nominated for the Editorial Board Award, established by businessman Boris Zimin.
"From March 2024 to February 2025, I deceived Novaya Tab, Cherta, Echo and The Moscow Times. At first, he wrote fictions only for Tab, and then the editors distributed them to other publications," Dima said in one of his posts.
He published his materials under the pseudonym Dmitry Shishkin. One of them is about the "Movement of the First", where he allegedly worked for more than a month. The text stated that the work of a public organization is conducted only for the sake of reports. However, in his posts, the author admitted that he had fabricated the entire invoice for the material.
"I made up a text that I submitted to the editors, from beginning to end. Of course, I didn't have any proof. But I didn't want to give up so easily, so... I falsified them. This is what my gallery looked like that day. I made fake screenshots from thousands of pieces," the author explained.
According to him, at some point, the editors of Novaya Taba nevertheless conducted an additional verification of the authenticity of facts in one of his materials. And he successfully passed it, although "there was not a word of truth in the text," the author stated.
In the spring of 2025, the New Tab finally exposed the deception. The publication deleted all of Dmitry Shishkin's materials, leaving instead a blank stating that the author was suspected of "neglecting editorial standards," but without details.
"It seemed to me that a big scandal would follow, but it did not happen," stated the author of the texts.
It was only after Dima's current self-disclosure that a comment appeared in one of the Novaya Tab's channels, in which the publication once again apologized to readers for publishing these texts "without proper fact checking."
Who is Dmitry Shishkin?
After self-disclosure, Dmitry Shishkin launched the podcast "Big Mistake" on social networks, consisting of six audio recordings. In them, he once again tells in detail how he wrote fictional texts for the publication, and also shares stories about himself, his relationships with peers and parents.
The Izvestia correspondent listened carefully to all the podcast releases and was able to identify Dmitry Shishkin's real identity based on the details of his biography. It turned out that the young man's real name is Dmitry, he is 17 years old, and now he is studying for a degree in customs at Penza State University.
Izvestia managed to contact Dmitry, and he agreed to explain why he went into journalism and what made him invent materials.
"They paid a very small internship fee, which doubled after successful completion of the internship. I didn't have a motive to frame the editorial office, snipe or anything like that," Dmitry said in correspondence with a correspondent of Izvestia.
When asked if he was disappointed in the opposition media after this story, Dmitry replied: "In general, I am not disappointed in anything. I respect my various colleagues, and I don't wish them any harm or anything bad. So no, there is no disappointment in colleagues."
At the same time, Dmitry was very evasive when asked what motivated him to come up with the materials.
"An attentive and diligent listener can find answers or non—answers to these questions in a podcast," he said. — The thing is, I guess I'm really a very bad journalist. I don't like making phone calls, chatting with people, and all that. At the very beginning of the internship, I realized that it was difficult for me to find heroes, and when the deadline was coming to an end, I decided to invent them. There was no fact checking, and I thought, why not keep doing it. That's all. <...> Such is life. I make mistakes."
Recall that Dmitry Shishkin's story is by no means the first such one. In January 2025, another scandal was discussed in the opposition environment — around a 21-year-old journalist from Tatarstan, who published about 30 texts in various opposition media under the pseudonym Asia Nesoeva. She invented almost all the facts in them, but despite this, she was also nominated for the Editorial Board award.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
