Last month, I looked at the way citizen journalism had
pieced together the journey of the Buk missile launcher that was apparently
used to shoot down flight MH17 as it overflew eastern Ukraine. The use of
geolocation and other readily available tools showed that the launcher had come
from the direction of Russia, and returned that way after the Boeing 777 was
destroyed.
Eliot Higgins, in an area with very few landmarks
This was all set out on
the Bellingcat site, the latest venture of Eliot Higgins, aka Brown Moses,
who has turned his attention to the videos posted by the group who wish to be
known as the Islamic State (IS). Geolocation is once again used to deduce the
location of one
of the group’s training camps, and also the
area where they murdered US journalist James Foley by beheading.
At the same time, the UK press still does not get it:
typical among them is the Daily Mail,
which is speculating
pointlessly about the identity of the killer. “The rapper, the hacker and the terror travel guide writer. Is one of
these British extremists Jihadi John? Three potential Islamic State 'Beatles'
emerge as MI5 'zeroes in' on murderer who beheaded U.S. journalist James Foley”
they assert.
In other words, they don’t have a clue. But on they plough,
needlessly getting side-tracked by an
email that may have been sent by someone from IS: “Ranting email sent to James Foley's parents 'may have been written by
working-class Briton': Language expert says spelling errors and phrases
indicate author was from UK”. Yes, and it could have been one of scores of
fighters.
And, in case Mail
readers thought the coverage of IS couldn’t
get any worse, it did, with “The
coming apocalypse: Last week, historian DOMINIC SANDBROOK wrote a damning
critique of the West's failure to halt Islamic fanatics. Now, after a savage
murder that confirmed his worst fears, he looks into the future”. Yeah,
right. A real historian wouldn’t turn out this kind of guff.
Fortunately, others are taking notice of what Bellingcat has
revealed, with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show giving
the training camp find an airing (at around three and a half minutes into
the segment), and
the Telegraph, which has previously
profiled Eliot Higgins, has told “A
UK-based Syria observer believes he may have identified the precise location of
the video filmed by the Islamic State”.
While too much of the Fourth Estate is speculating
pointlessly, Bellingcat is revealing much about IS’ modus operandi, and also
that the group is remarkably poor at keeping its activities under wraps. All of
that will help to inform what is really happening out there in northern Iraq,
and therefore bring us nearer to finding out who did what. This, it should be
clear, is a superior strategy to speculating.
Citizen journalism is here to stay. And the press needs to deal with that.
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