Detailed ‘open source’ news investigations are catching on
One of the more striking pieces of journalism from the Ukraine war featured intercepted radio transmissions from Russian soldiers indicating an invasion in disarray, their conversations even interrupted by a hacker literally whistling “Dixie.”
It was the work of an investigations unit at The New York Times that specializes in open-source reporting, using publicly available material like satellite images, mobile phone or security camera recordings, geolocation and other internet tools to tell stories.
The field is in its infancy but rapidly catching on. The Washington Post announced last month it was adding six people to its video forensics team, doubling its size. The University of California at Berkeley last fall became the first college to offer an investigative reporting class that focuses specifically on these techniques. ...
The Post team is an outgrowth of efforts begun in 2019 to verify the authenticity of potentially newsworthy video. There are many ways to smoke out fakes, including examining shadows to determine if the apparent time of day in the video corresponds to when the activity supposedly captured actually took place. ...
The Times used security and cell-phone video, along with interviews, to tell the story of one Ukraine apartment house as Russians invaded. ...
As efforts expand, Koenig said journalists need to make sure their stories drive the tools that are used, instead of the other way around. ...
See the full story here: https://santamariatimes.com/entertainment/detailed-open-source-news-investigations-are-catching-on/article_de5de7a3-0462-514e-9f31-ed805871273f.html
