While SDFF 2020 Official Selection, Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World (Hans Pool, 2018) won an Emmy in 2019, it’s now up for a second one, along with collaborator Newsy, for its groundbreaking approaches to reporting the news.
Bellingcat, the independent, international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists, and the topic of SDFF 2020 Official Selection, Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World (Hans Pool, 2018) is up for an Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches: Current News. Bellingcat and collaborator Newsy were nominated an Emmy in News and Documentary Award for a series of open-source investigations by the two entities over the past year.
These investigations include: explorations of police violence against journalists in the US, Saudi air strikes in Yemen and executions near the border between Syria and Turkey (link here, be prepared for images of graphic violence).
Bellingcat stands out among its peers in a number of ways—it’s innovative use of publicly available data and citizen journalists, who it also trains. Founded by Eliot Higgins after the loss of his wife left him a single father, working from home, Bellingcat is notable not only for its combination of advanced technology, forensic research, journalism, online/data-driven investigative techniques, transparency and accountability, but for its use of international citizen investigative journalists, who it also trains to use cutting-edge digital techniques and crowdsourcing as journalistic approaches that are innovative and capable of keeping up with the fast pace of global news.
To explore the work Bellingcat and Newsy have done together, visit Bellingcat’s archive of Newsy collaborations, Newsy’s list of “documentaries” made with Bellingcat, and/or their youtube playlist.
The documentary Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World (Hans Poole, 2018), an official SDFF 2020 selection, won the International Emmy for Documentary in 2019, as well as a slew of honors from various European film festivals. The documentary explores the promise of open source investigation, going inside the exclusive world of the “citizen investigative journalist collective known as Bellingcat.