Citizen Journalism Pays a Visit to US by Frank Stipp

Media, Literally

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival comes to New York once a year. So when the director of the film ‘Bellingcat’ — a documentary about a popular European ‘citizen journalism’ site — strongly recommended it, we booked a seat.

Citizen Journalism is widely believed to provide a cure for the corporate media model. The concept quite rightly implies that any human who can create content and chew gum at the same time can write articles or capture images that may be of interest to viewers. Such outlets generally employ staff editors, programmers and designers, and have become widely subscribed to, both in authoritarian and neoliberal societies the world over. Given near-unanimous disgust with the caliber of modern- day US media, the opportunity permits those whose interests are not entirely corporate, but include civic, cultural or social concerns, to enter this market.

The lions’ share of the film follows Bellingcat members’ investigation into the downing over the eastern Ukraine of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lampur, killing all 298 passengers and crew on July 17, 2014. The plot follows the group’s correspondents and tech gurus as they collect open source data and images amassed from such popular outlets as Paris Match, Google, RT, etc. with which to reconstruct still and video evidence of this crime and others.

The correspondents and hackers successfully track the movement of a Russian ‘Buk’ anti-aircraft missile launcher across Russia’s Ukrainain border to where the wreckage landed. In addition to collecting publically accessible data such as satellite images from Google, amateur You Tube videos, etc., Bellingcat reporters interview witnesses on the ground. Our heroes occasionally exhibit the kind of courage, without which, competent journalism is difficult to carry out.

Bellingcat (the name envisages mice hanging a bell from the neck of a particularly dangerous cat) also conducted an investigation of the bombing of a market in Syria, which pointed toward US involvement. The protagonist of the film, Christiaan Triebert, is shown matching grainy images captured at long distance with his own close-up reconnoitering among mosques and minarets at the scene of the crime.

Following the groups’ announcement its above findings, Triebert was booked on Germany’s ZTF news network to debate his team’s conclusions against staunch exponent of US-style journalism, author Seymour Hersh. Triebert said he described to viewers in great detail how he and his team came to collect their raw material, the means through which they pieced together tiny bits of evidence, and how they eventually came to a careful conclusion many months later. Hersh, he explained, simply claimed his that source from the Pentagon said in effect that ‘it wasn’t us.’ “As if I should believe him,” said Triebert “on his beautiful blue eyes.”

Photo credit: image from Bellingcat of Ukrainian soldier with AK47, overseeing the wreckage of the Malaysia-Netherlands Flight 247, mentioned in the article