This year’s 30 To Watch Journalism Awards marked its 15th year with the introduction of a new category: the Disinformation Award, created to recognise journalists who confront falsehoods head on in some of the world’s most contested information environments.
The inaugural winner, BBC journalist Matt Murphy, exemplifies the courage and rigour this award was designed to honour. His reporting on Sudan and Ukraine demonstrates how journalism can cut through chaos, counter manipulation and shape public understanding even when the information landscape is deliberately distorted.
Our insights and data team used Pulsar’s audience intelligence platform to analyse the real‑world impact of Murphy’s reporting. The findings reveal both the value of his journalism and the importance of sophisticated social listening tools in understanding how narratives form, spread and evolve.
Pulsar’s analysis showed two very different types of impact across Murphy’s investigations.
In 2023, a civil war broke out in Western Sudan between two rival military factions, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Reports of ethnic violence committed against civilians by the RSF, the paramilitary group fighting the SAF for control of the country, soon followed. This crisis came to a head in late October 2025 when the RSF invaded the city of el-Fasher which had been under siege for eighteen months.
Fresh reports of war crimes committed by the RSF immediately followed and social media was flooded with real and AI‑generated images of mass killings, often circulating without consistent labelling and creating a chaotic environment where misinformation could spread quickly. In this context, verification was critical.
Murphy’s reporting cut through the noise by confirming the scale of the killings, authenticating images of mass burials and verifying RSF insignia in footage that directly showed the atrocities. By pre‑bunking the RSF’s likely attempts to downplay events, the article helped prevent misleading narratives from taking hold. Our analysis shows that positive sentiment towards the RSF remained extremely limited, suggesting that authoritative reporting such as Murphy’s helped suppress what could have become a significant misinformation surge.
Murphy’s investigation into Russia’s mass seizure of homes in Ukrainian city Mariupol had a very different impact: it shaped the conversation in two ways by sparking online discussions about Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian homes and providing the solid evidence base needed to debunk Russian propaganda which downplayed the situation.
Our analysis finds that the BBC Verify article became a central reference point in discussions, both immediately after publication and resurfacing in discussions again months later. It was repeatedly cited by AI chatbots such as Grok in comment threads, showing how verified journalism was influencing not just public debate but also AI‑generated responses. The BBC investigation was referenced alongside discussions about Russian propaganda portraying reconstruction efforts, demonstrating how Murphy’s reporting helped anchor and reinforce efforts to debunk those narratives. Even six months on, the article continued to drive and inform online discourse.
MHP Maiven
These insights reflect the core of our MHP Maiven misinformation capability, which combines advanced social listening and GEO with expert analysis to help organisations understand and manage information risk. We identify where misinformation is emerging, which audiences or issues are most vulnerable, and how false narratives evolve across networks.
Alongside this, we can assess when fringe claims have gained enough traction to influence mainstream reporting or even shape chatbot responses. This enables us to advise clients on how to correct, counter or contain misleading narratives before they escalate, ensuring they stay ahead in an increasingly complex information environment.
If you’re interested in learning more about the data, insights, and audience intelligence MHP can provide, get in touch with us at [email protected]
