Bellingcat
Bellingcat (also spelled bell¿ngcat ) is an international investigative research network around the British network activist Eliot Higgins , which specializes in fact checking and open source intelligence (OSINT), in particular in the area of human rights violations , war crimes and financial crime .
Founded in July 2014, Bellingcat began investigating the use of weapons in the Syrian civil war . The analysis, which suggests that Russian satellite images of the crash of the MH-17 passenger plane during the war in eastern Ukraine, caused a stir , as well as research to identify the perpetrators in the Skripal case .
In 2019, Bellingcat has 16 employees and 60 freelancers in addition to Higgins. The head office is in Leicester .
Surname
The name is derived from the English phrase belling the cat ( the cat a collar cape ) from. This goes back to a medieval fable. In this, the mice advise how they can make the cat safe. One suggests hanging this one bell around his neck, but there is none that does it.
prehistory
Eliot Higgins started the Brown Moses Blog in March 2012 ; his research was based on videos from the Syrian civil war . He viewed hundreds of these short clips posted on the Internet, located them, and examined details of the weapons used. He was able to confirm that the opponents of the war were accused of using cluster bombs and chemical weapons by the Ba'ath regime .
On July 15, 2014, the blogger launched the Bellingcat platform with the help of private donations via Kickstarter.com . The team evaluates photos and videos that are publicly available on the Internet. According to its own statements, Bellingcat is financed through crowdfunding .
Kristyan Benedict, an Amnesty International campaign manager , told the New Yorker in 2013 that many organizations had analysts, but Higgins was faster than many established research teams.
War in Eastern Ukraine
On December 21, 2016, Bellingcat published a report analyzing the use of artillery by the Russian armed forces against Ukrainian towns in the summer of 2014.
MH 17
The network caused a stir several times with research into the crash of the MH17 passenger plane over eastern Ukraine . The group claimed to have demonstrated that a Buk missile system passed through Russia and rebel-controlled areas the day before the crash ; the day after the crash, the same vehicle drove back to Russia with a missing missile.
In May 2015, the group published a report that is supposed to prove that the aerial photographs submitted by Russia had been altered using Ukrainian weapons systems and that the dating was incorrect. Many media took over the representation of Bellingcat.
In an interview with Spiegel on June 3, 2015, the image forensic scientist Jens Kriese stated that the form of analysis used by Bellingcat for image changes was scientifically inconclusive, as there were no specialist publications on it due to the need for interpretation. In addition, Bellingcat could only have examined the images processed for public presentation and not the originals. Only the raw images are meaningful and are of course locked up. The founder of the analysis site fotoforensics.com, which had been used by Bellingcat, also distanced himself from their conclusions regarding the image processing.
Bellingcat responded by purchasing additional satellite photos from DigitalGlobe for the days in question and claims to have found discrepancies when comparing them with the MOD images, which prove that the Russian satellite photos cannot be from the alleged date.
Skripal case
Since September 2018, Bellingcat has played an important role in the identification of the two alleged Russian prime suspects, who are charged with carrying out the poison attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Together with the Russian Internet newspaper The Insider , she researched, among other things, that the suspects' passports were issued in 2009, which had not previously been found in any passport database. Eventually, Bellingcat identified both individuals as members of the GRU military intelligence agency .
Movie
In 2018 the documentary Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World was released, which deals with the Skripal case and the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 .
The film won the International Emmy Award for Documentary in 2019 .
Prices
In 2015, Higgins and Bellingcat received the special prize of the Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Prize .
In 2017, employee Christiaan Triebert received the European Press Prize Innovation Award for the detailed reconstruction of the coup attempt in Turkey in 2016 in the article The Turkish Coup through the Eyes of its Plotters on Bellingcat.
In 2019, Bellingcat and the Russian Internet publication The Insider received the Investigative Reporting Award from the European Press Prize for identifying the two men suspected of having poisoned Yulia and Sergei Skripal . With the help of the € 50,000 prize money, Bellingcat opened a new office in The Hague .
Also in 2019, Bellingcat and the US news network Newsy received the Scripps Howard Award for innovations in investigative journalism in the field of international conflict.
In 2020, Bellingcat received the Machiavelli Prize for Quality Journalism from the Dutch Machiavelli Foundation.
Web links
- www.bellingcat.com , the homepage (English)
- Brown Moses Blog (inactive since July 2014)
- Website for the film Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World
Individual evidence
- ↑ contributors , about
- ^ Muhammad Idrees Ahmad: Bellingcat and How Open Source Reinvented Investigative Journalism . In: New York Review of Books . June 10, 2019. Retrieved June 10, 2019.
- ↑ a b Robin Millard: UK site leads the way in Skripal case with online savvy . In: AFP . September 29, 2018. Accessed September 30, 2018.
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↑ Belling the Cat Fable English and German
cf. also Belling the cat - ↑ Brown Moses Blog. Retrieved June 3, 2015 .
- ^ Bellingcat, for and by citizen investigative journalists. Retrieved June 2, 2015 .
- ↑ Patrick Radden Keefe: Rocket Man: How an unemployed blogger confirmed that Syria had used chemical weapons. The New Yorker , November 25, 2013, accessed June 2, 2015 .
- ↑ Ralf Sotscheck : War is his hobby. In: the daily newspaper . August 13, 2014, accessed June 3, 2015 .
- ↑ Putin's Undeclared War Summer 2014 Russian Artillery Strikes against Ukraine (en)
- ^ Forensic analysis of satellite images of the Russian Ministry of Defense. (PDF) Bellingcat, accessed on June 3, 2015 (English).
- ↑ Bloggers give the lie to Moscow. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 1, 2015, accessed August 5, 2019 .
- ↑ Katja Tichimirowa: Kremlin is said to have forged satellite photos of the MH17 crash. Berliner Zeitung , June 1, 2015, accessed on June 3, 2015 . , see. also Katja Tichomirowa: The blue of the sky. How Russia forged satellite imagery to prove Ukrainian guilt for the MH17 crash . Berliner Zeitung (print edition), June 2, 2015, p. 6
- ↑ Report on MH17 crash Russia is said to have falsified photos. tagesschau.de, June 1, 2015, accessed June 3, 2015 .
- ↑ Der Spiegel , No. 3/2015, pp. 58–68
- ^ Benjamin Bidder : "Bellingcat operates coffee grounds reading" In: Spiegel Online , June 3, 2015 (interview with Jens Kriese).
- ↑ New July 17th Satellite Imagery Confirms Russia Produced Fake MH17 Evidence
- ^ Who to Trust, Google or the Russian MoD? A Guide to Verifying Google Earth Satellite Image Dates
- ↑ Suspects traveled with suspicious passports . In: Die Zeit , September 16, 2018.
- ↑ Posts Tagged: Skripal. Bellingcat Investigation Team, accessed October 12, 2018 .
- ^ Bellingcat - Truth in a Post-Truth World . Accessed December 1, 2019.
- ^ Bellingcat - Truth in a Post-Truth World . Accessed December 1, 2019.
- ↑ BELLINGCAT - TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD WINS THE RTBF AWARD AT THE FESTIVAL DES LIBERÉTES 2019 . October 31, 2019. Accessed December 1, 2019.
- ^ Two Dutch documentaries win International Emmy awards . November 26, 2019. Retrieved December 1, 2019.
- ↑ Press release of the Hanns-Joachim Friedrichs Association
- ↑ https://www.europeanpressprize.com/laureate/christiaan-triebert/
- ↑ Investigative Reporting Award 2019 Winner - Unmasking the Salisbury Poisoning Suspects: A Four-Part Investigation . 2019. Accessed May 24, 2019.
- ↑ Bellingcat to establish new office in The Hague after € 500,000 funding win through Dutch postcode lottery
- ↑ Scripps Howard Awards announce winners, March 3, 2020
- ↑ Bellingcat krijgt Machiavelliprijs voor 'kwaliteitsimpuls' journalistiek (Bellingcat receives Machiavelli prize for 'quality impulse' journalism) . January 7, 2020. Accessed February 12, 2020.