How online sleuthing is changing the news game

Open-source intelligence is here to stay, write Amy McArdle and Lucy Sarret

Picture this: a newsroom buzzing with activity, reporters frantically typing away at their keyboards, phones ringing off the hook. But instead of relying solely on interviews and offcial statements, journalists are using a powerful new tool to uncover the truth: OSINT, or open-source intelligence.

What may sound like a daunting, fashy term is really just a way of harnessing the vast amounts of information available on the internet to uncover hidden stories and shed light on complex issues.

First used by American spy agencies, opensource intelligence has since trickled into investigative journalism. It consists of online information, available publicly for all to see, but that may seem insignifcant when not pieced together. In other words, you simply need to know where - and how - to look at it in order to understand the implications.

OSINT covers anything from reverseimage searching an unverifed picture to using Google Earth to pinpoint the location of a particular event captured on social media, which allows journalists to piece together a complete picture of the world around us.

Despite the asset this offers their skillset, open-source techniques are still relatively unknown by many journalists.

Jack Taylor, alumnus of the 2021 City MA Investigative Journalism course and now OSINT producer at Sky, explains he taught himself how to use open-source as a way of researching international news stories at a time where covid restricted travel. This made him a highly valuable member in the Sky newsroom when he joined in 2021.

Benjamin Strick, Director of Investigations for the Centre for Information Resilience and Bellingcat contributor, says of OSINT: “Anyone can learn the skills, it’s essentially spot-the-difference for adults.”

For those that learn, the results are nothing short of astounding. Thanks to OSINT, journalists are uncovering corruption, exposing human rights abuses, and holding those in power to account like never before. For example, Sky’s OSINT team has uncovered evidence supporting the claim Iran has been supplying ammunition to Russia’s war in Ukraine. But it’s not just about breaking news - OSINT is also being used to tell deeper, more nuanced stories, and to give voice to those who have been ignored or marginalised.

Stories of Russian war crimes in Ukraine began to emerge quickly after the invasion. Taylor contributed to the investigation into these stories, which produced disturbing images of Bucha’s streets, showing nine bodies executed by Russian forces. Through geolocating satellite images, Taylor and his team were able to undermine previous claims by Russia that they withdrew days before these killings. Taylor’s work was subsequently used by Sky newsreader Mark Austin when interviewing Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

This is just one example of how open source journalism has been used to expose war crimes. For Strick, OSINT was essential in breaking the investigation he is most proud of. Having won the Peabody Award and several others for this story, his collaborative effort led to an entire government being caught in a lie and four murderers being jailed for their crimes.

When a video showing two women and two children held at gunpoint and shot 22 times by Cameroonian soldiers was posted on Twitter in July 2018, it quickly went viral. The story was vehemently denied by the country’s government, and the media cycle quickly lost interest. Despite this, Strick decided to investigate whether the video was, in fact, fake, or if innocent lives had been taken by soldiers, and covered up by a corrupt government.

It took about three months to authenticate the video. While this may seem long, Strike explains the viral nature of the video meant his team had to sift through reposts, comments, and reach out to users before fnding a lead.

Eventually, Strick and his team were told the video was shot in northwest Cameroon, which, while still a considerable large area to cover, gave some idea of where to look. On Google Earth, satellite images showed a mountain range that they were able to match up with the background of the video, and confrming it was, in fact, real.

“It’s a simple understanding of opensource”, he explains. “It really showed its strength by proving where, when, what, who on one single video. We were able to hold the guilty parties accountable. It was the frst thing I worked on from A to Z where a video found on social media led to an arrest.”

Gianluca Mezzofore, a 2011 City MA International Journalism graduate, now an investigative journalist for CNN, also made use of OSINT when he found the culprits behind the murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022.

While the Israeli government denied their involvement, Mezzofore and his team proved their guilt using OSINT. Content posted online proved essential to the investigation. Sound experts managed to pinpoint the exact location of the murder based on videos; a digital sundial was also used to determine, according to shadows, the exact time of the killing.

Tracing the source of information found online, such as digging through Twitter to fnd the original poster of a certain video or geolocating where a picture was taken via Google Earth, allows journalists to uncover the truths where surface-level information may be conficting.

Strick admits he learnt his OSINT skills not in the feld of journalism, but in his previous military career working in mapping and geolocation. Although they may seem technical, he echoes Taylor’s insistence that they really are accessible to any aspiring journalist.

“It’s a very simple skill to pick up. People are often surprised that it’s just manual hours of digging and searching. There may be some smoke and mirror tricks, but most of it is being very meticulous. I fnd that a saw the scene frst-hand. lot of journalists have that digging instinct naturally, that obsessive mindset.”

OSINT has opened new opportunities for investigative journalism to substantiate claims and enhance news reporting. Taylor explains how open-source techniques, combined with traditional journalism, produce fresh narratives that would previously go unreported. “Open-source allows you to string all those bits of information together to form an irrefutable conclusion,” he says.

Open-source journalism has added a new dimension to news stories that previously went undiscovered. It has led to intersectional skills being used across the newsroom, developing stories at multiple levels.

OSINT has enhanced the way journalists approach news reporting, and this infuence is only set to increase with the investment newsrooms make in these teams. The future of journalism will undoubtedly be shaped by these honed skills and be an element in all investigative journalism to come. The global open source intelligence market is projected to reach $29.19 billion by 2026, almost six times the amount it was in 2018.

To illustrate this, Strick points to the shift from the coverage of the Iraq war from 2003 to 2011 to current news reporting.

During the confict, most of the reporting was presented by a Western journalist on the ground after a particular attack. The only information available to the public was that broadcast and published by news outlets.

Fast-forwarding merely a decade later, the digital age has given a platform to content showing what happens before, during, and after a particular event. Journalists can piece events by analysing social media posts, geolocating sources, and digging through Twitter to fnd potential interviewees who

OSINT has become a vital aspect of most newsrooms, as the ever-increasing digitization of information has transformed the way audiences - and journalists- get their information. Taylor describes how important the collaboration between teams is to reporting today. OSINT journalists like him support traditional reporters to elevate their stories, and produce original pieces. “I can’t do my job without their footage,” he says.

Training journalists is the frst step in maximising the potential of OSINT in the future of media. As Strick explains, many schools -- including City -- have implemented an introduction of opensource to their students, in order to hone their digital skills and make them more equipped to enter the professional world. He also points out that the newer generations seem to be particularly adept at using these data collection techniques.

“I’ve noticed more and more journalism students are becoming good OSINT journalists, because they’ve grown up using the internet. They have digital literacy skills that us ‘old hacks’ don’t have,” he said.

While an undeniable asset, Mezzofore insists that traditional investigating is far from obsolete.

“I still think we need to be careful not to take a deterministic approach. It’s a tool, and it can still be fallible. Talking to sources, context research and the more ‘traditional’ approaches are still essential to uncovering the real story, simply using open-sources is not enough to produce good journalism.”