Main Edition
US
FR
The Salisbury Novichok poisoning suspects Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Credit: Getty
Few industries have suffered as much digital disruption as the media, seeing powerful giants felled and old certainties shattered with phenomenal speed by a host of new players bursting out of start-ups. Consider the rise of Netflix, which at the turn of the century was renting out videos and today is valued at more than Disney; its increase in spend on content this year is much the same as the BBC’s entire annual spend.
In my own industry of newspapers, titles have seen advertising, sales and budgets crash. Most now fear for their survival, leaving journalists looking anxiously into the future and plotting potential escape routes. I spent 12 enjoyable years as deputy editor of The Independent, which was born amid great excitement the year after I began on a local paper yet has since disappeared as a physical product. A new City University analysis shows the impact of its retreat online – readership and global reach have increased, but time spent reading its content has plunged dramatically.
This is depressing. As a foreign reporter, I am fortunate to write for a title that still invests in journalism abroad. I hear often from colleagues on other papers, though, how budgets drastically restrict their work, especially when it involves travel. Yet as an optimist, I also see much to cheer – and not just from increased accountability in this unruly digital age. As one prominent investigative reporter reminded me this week, it is far easier to probe financial misdeeds when so much information is accessible from a computer rather than having to spend days trekking around libraries, offices and town halls to comb through files and official records.
Two recent exposes have given us further examples of how online data, combined with crowd-sourcing and cross-border collusion, is empowering journalism. In both cases, teams used readily-available information to demolish the lies of murderous regimes. Analogue dictators, even backed by the full power of states, are no match for smart investigators in the digital age. And they show how journalism is adapting to this turbulent era by finding transformative ways to break significant stories of global interest.
The first report was by BBC Africa into chilling atrocities captured on video that went viral on social media in July. The footage is horrific, showing soldiers leading away two women and two young children before shooting them. This is murder in the coldest of blood. It was thought to have taken place in Cameroon, although the government dismissed it as ‘fake news’ and some said it was from Mali. So Africa Eye began to investigate with journalists and freelance digital experts, using methods trialled on footage of soldiers burning villages in Cameroon’s Anglophone region.
They matched geographical details with satellite images to pin down the location after receiving a tip, then assessed shadows cast by the killers to tie down the date with a specialist app. They examined weapons and uniforms to prove the soldiers were from Cameroon, despite government denials, by matching them with pictures on Facebook. Social media even helped identify one man murdering a little girl. “Astonishing investigative journalism, which uses digital technology to amazing effect, cannot be championed or shared enough,” said Amol Rajan, the BBC media editor (and final editor of The Independent newspaper). He is right – and so far more than 55,000 people have shared BBC Africa’s thread on Twitter alone.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe