The ease with which witnesses from around the world can record, upload, and share video is shifting the roles of news reporting and evidence gathering. Consequential global events are being documented by citizen journalists, in corners of the world reporters cannot access, on the scene long before international investigators arrive. News outlets are relying increasingly on citizen video—see, for example CNN’s iReport, Al Jazeera’s Sharek portal, or the NYT’s Watching Syria’s War—as are researchers and investigators of human rights violations, including the International Criminal Court and Amnesty International. 

Madeleine Bair will discuss the ethical and technical challenges faced by news rooms and human rights investigators increasingly reliant on citizen footage, and ways that tech companies, human rights organizations, and news innovators are responding. 

Madeleine graduated from UC Berkeley with a dual masters in Journalism and International and Area Studies. A fellowship with the Human Rights Center allowed her to merge her background in reporting with her passion for human rights. She continues to bridge the two fields at WITNESS, a Brooklyn-based organization that trains activists around the world in using video to advocate for human rights. There, she leads the Human Rights Channel, a collaboration of Witness, YouTube, and Storyful that curates, verifies, and contextualizes citizen video on human rights issues from around the world.