One of the small number of examples similar to Ovsyannikova is Vladimir Danchev, a Soviet English-language radio announcer during the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. In 1983, Danchev began quietly including truth in his broadcasts: e.g., referring to the war as “an occupation,” one fought against Afghans who were “the defenders against the Soviet invaders.” Amazingly enough, no one powerful seemed to notice until the BBC World Service ran a segment on Danchev. At this point he was quickly bundled off to a mental hospital in present-day Uzbekistan. He later was able to return to his radio network but not as an on-air announcer; he apparently was given a job organizing the record library.

In America there’s Michael Moore, who won the Best Documentary Oscar for his movie “Bowling for Columbine” on March 23, 2003, just days after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began. Moore used his acceptance speech to say, “We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. … We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you.” When Moore and his wife got back to their home in Michigan, they found three truckloads of manure dumped on their driveway. The studio that had signed a contract to fund Moore’s next movie backed out. He received so many death threats that he eventually required a large 24-hour security detail. (I worked for Moore several years later, and even then the amount of hate directed his way was extremely voluminous and alarming.)

There have also been disruptions of American newscasts. In January 1991 — just as the first Gulf War started — activists from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, snuck onto the set of the CBS Evening News. They shouted “Fight AIDS, not Arabs,” before being dragged away as the network went black for six seconds. Other protesters attempted to do the same at the “MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour” on PBS but never got on air.

On extremely rare occasions there have been U.S. hosts like Danchev, willing to challenge the basic rationales for war. Phil Donahue had a show on MSNBC starting in 2002 and then was fired in February 2003, even though it had the network’s highest ratings. An internal memo said Donahue seemed “to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives,” and that it would be a mistake to have a show that was “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda.”

Then there’s Abby Martin, an American who had her own RT show “Breaking the Set” and used it to condemn Russia’s annexation of Crimea on air in March 2014. Martin left RT the next year, although she has said RT never exercised editorial control over the show. Martin now hosts the crowd-funded series “Empire Files.” YouTube recently deleted all 550 episodes of “Breaking the Set” — meaning that in this instance, remarkably enough, the company is being more censorious than the Russian government.

There are more examples, but not that many. There are far more instances of those with access to live TV who are unwilling to break ranks on air, whatever their private misgivings. At an early 2000s dinner party, Peter Jennings, then the anchor of ABC “World News Tonight,” asked Henry Kissinger, “What does it feel like to be a war criminal?” But you can search long and hard in the ABC archives without finding Jennings broadcasting that perspective on Kissinger to the country.

Likewise, Katie Couric told the National Press Club in 2007 that “People in this country were misled in term of the rationale of [the Iraq War]. … I remember feeling, when I was anchoring ‘The Today Show,’ this inevitable march toward war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this? And is this really being properly challenged by the right people?’” It apparently did not occur to Couric that, as one of the most famous and well-paid people on TV, she might be one of the right people to properly challenge the case for war. In any case, when it mattered she discreetly did not mention any of these doubts, instead telling her audience such things as “Navy SEALS rock!”