GenZedong

It's pretty self-explanatory that spineless Western media outlets are in dire need of content and public support to get their clicks and image boost. Even if someone were to bring up the point that the shelling is in fact not done by Russians, it'll go down the typical propaganda blur process, either:

• getting outright ignored, and on social platforms, the posts are seen as "pro-Putin" and are automatically disliked, censored, etc; or
• getting sent farther down the rabbit hole under the accusation that it's "pro-Putin propaganda" and then a narrative is slowly built up about how they're in fact the ones to be correct.

For the last point: look up the Karl-Marx-Allee and see its history with regard to being "Stalin's bathroom". In short, about a decade ago, a person thought it'd be funny to claim this boulevard in Berlin was called "Stalin's bathroom" (due to some marble decoration) during the DDR times.

In the similar, repetitive fashion of anti-communist perspectives that the West takes on, an editor found it to be "credible enough". It was then rooted into the Wikipedia page and as a result led to a lot of media exposure, cementing the fact it was "Stalin's bathroom".

The same person tried to edit their joke out years later and the request got declined by a Wikipedia administrator. They later came out to be a journalist who detailed the situation in full, and that is the only reason it got enough awareness to be fixed. At the same time, it could have been highly possible the journalist would have been called a liar and not been trusted, meaning we'd still think this joke was real to this day.

Media ethics and digital competence are imperative to have for this exact reason. Too many people however simply refuse to or cannot acknowledge these things, either by own choice or not. It is really sad.