Whatever Russia’s so-called “Union of Orthodox Journalists” (Союз Православных Журналистов) has on offer, it’s clearly not journalism.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue has followed UOJ’s “reporting” closely over the past two years. So far as we can tell, it serves as little more than one of the two arms of the Moscow Patriarchate’s disinformation apparatus—the other being the Department for External Church Relations under the chairmanship of Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk.

UOJ’s “reporting” on the Moscow Patriarchate is unfailingly glowing; on the Ecumenical Patriarchate, unfailingly disparaging—and often borderline mendacious; and on the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, unfailingly as “heretics” and “schismatics.”

This isn’t how journalism works. This is propaganda, plain and simple.

Case in point:

On November 25 UOJ published a “report” with the astonishing headline, Head of Phanar in Athos Persuades Monks to Unite with Catholics. This was picked up two days later by its proxy, Orthodox Christianity, as Patriarch Bartholomew Tells Athonites Reunion with Catholics Is Inevitable, Reports UOJ.

Even a cursory reading shows no factual basis for the “report,” but a classic case of someone told someone who told someone.

We urge our readers in the strongest possible terms to take anything “reported” by UOJ and Orthodox Christianity with complete skepticism unless corroborated by other sources which adhere to accepted journalistic standards.

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