Providing Ukrainian audiences with content they can trust

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 15 July 2026

BBC Media Action, the BBC’s international charity, and BBC Research & Development (BBC R&D) have worked with Ukrainian national broadcaster Suspilne Ukraine (Public) to launch a new ‘nutrition label’ for its content, ensuring audiences receive information they can trust in wartime.

The Content Credentials standard introduced by C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authentication) is an open international standard for tracking changes in digital content, created in response to AI generation of increasingly realistic images. These images are often manipulated in cases of wartime misinformation, making it hard for audiences to know who or what they can trust.

This Content Credential approach, now in beta testing, allows Suspilne website users to click to see the origin of images and videos, and if and how an item has been edited.

The BBC R&D team is a co-founding member of the Coalition and works with leading tech companies and broadcasters around the world in support of Content Credentials that build audience trust in what they watch, read and hear.

“Developing and helping to deploy this technology to the locations and situations that need it most is a core part of our project team’s mission in R&D. Suspilne’s use of C2PA cameras to capture cryptographically signed authentic content into a news publishing workflow is among the first of its kind, and we hope that the impact will extend into the rest of the news ecosystem,” said Charlie Halford, a principal engineer with BBC R&D.

Drawing on its long-standing partnership with Suspilne Ukraine, BBC Media Action supported the implementation of the technology and worked alongside BBC R&D and engineering teams to integrate the approach into newsroom operations.

BBC Media Action also funded the purchase of two professional cameras with C2PA support and subscriptions to digital services for secure photo transfer and processing, creating a ‘chain of trust’ from the first shot through to publication.

“This is the first technology project in Eastern Europe that protects original content and allows audiences to distinguish it from deepfakes. C2PA is an effective tool to counter disinformation and support transparency amid conflict and crisis, and Suspilne, as a long-time partner of BBC Media Action, is breaking new ground in building that trust with Ukrainian audiences,” said Olga Sedova, Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at BBC Media Action.  

BBC Media Action has worked with Suspilne Ukraine for more than a decade, from modernising news flows and building a modern newsroom to helping the broadcaster stay on air during wartime.

Suspilne’s leaders said the project will be essential in embedding audience trust in the broadcaster’s production processes.

"Credibility is a fundamental value of Suspilne news, and we strengthen it with innovations. Behind the ‘cr’ mark there is a full-fledged trust infrastructure integrated into the production processes of Suspilne," said Mykola Chernotytskyi, Chairman of the Board of Suspilne Ukraine.

"Suspilne is focused on building its user experience for a new generation of interaction with digital products. Our task is to make the signals of the origin of content understandable and familiar elements of every news story for millions of users, building trust while ensuring our original content – across news, sports, culture, archives and children’s – is clearly identifiable,” said Kyrylo Iesin, head of the digital product development team at Suspilne Ukraine.

Engineering support for the implementation was provided by Tim Murphy, a community mentor at the Content Authenticity Initiative and co-founder of the Pixelstream platform, which is also used to verify signed content. SSL.com provided Suspilne with C2PA and CAWG (Creator Assertions Working Group) certificates free of charge.

The technology is now being integrated into Suspilne’s internal editorial processes and used in a beta function for images with ongoing testing to ensure the data is understandable to users before being extended to audio and video on suspilne.media.

BBC Media Action funded this partnership with support from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

For more information please contact Carolynne Wheeler, BBC Media Action head of communications, on carolynne.wheeler@bbc.co.uk or the BBC press office on press.office@bbc.co.uk.

About BBC Media Action:BBC Media Action is the BBC’s international charity, working in more than 30 countries and 50 languages, supporting independent media essential to democracy and development. BBC Media Action’s projects and programmes reach more than 100 million people around the world each year with information they can trust, helping to build stronger democracies, a safer, more habitable planet and more inclusive societies. While a proud part of the BBC family, BBC Media Action is an independent charity and wholly reliant on donors and supporters to carry out its work.

To find out more, please see www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction.

About BBC Research & Development: BBC Research & Development is a multi-disciplinary team which has been crucial to shaping the media and tech industry for over 93 years. Its global influence has been key to the development of technology like colour television, digital radio, Ultra High-Definition pictures, and breakthroughs in TV graphics. It has influenced internet streaming, media provenance and a whole host of technology and standards linked to the production and delivery of media content. 

Multi- award winning and defined by the Royal Charter and public service values, BBC R&D ensures that the technology is developed in a way which prioritises benefits for audiences and society, now and in an increasingly complex technological future.

The BBC's own use of C2PA started with a 2024 BBC Verify trial and continues with the development of tools to detect AI-generated or modified images & videos, with many more opportunities in the future.

About Suspilne Ukraine: Suspilne Broadcasting is Ukraine’s independent national media company working across TV, radio and online, including TV channels Pershyi, Suspilne Kultura, Suspilne Sport and a national network of local channels, and radio stations Ukrainian Radio, Radio Promin, Radio Culture and Radiotochka. Suspilne speaks in the languages of national communities, represents Ukraine at Eurovision, develops the children's YouTube channel "Brobaks", and trains the media community at the Academy of Public Broadcasting.