Eliot Higgins

Executive Director, Bellingcat

Uncovering global wrongdoing through forensic data analysis by ‘citizen-journalists’

17th September 2020

Eliot Higgins is the founder and chief executive of Bellingcat, the investigative journalism ‘collective’ responsible for “uncovering wrongdoing all around the world”.  Founded in 2014 with HQ in the Netherlands, they have 18 employees and more than 30 contributors around the world. Pioneers of open-source journalism, their forensic research of publicly available data and ‘citizen-journalist analysis’ uses techniques such as ‘geo-location’ to pinpoint exact locations through satellite imagery to corroborate or disprove claims. Their work uncovering cases of child abuse in Ukraine was nominated for the 2020 European Press Prize for Innovation. In this in-depth interview, Eliot describes how they identified the Russian rocket-launcher which brought down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17; explains how they uncovered the identities of the Russian agents involved in the Salisbury novichok poisoning; and discusses the threats they face – online and physical – from those trying to frustrate their work, including governments and secret services.

Also available on these platforms:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Amazon Music
Overcast
TuneIn
Castbox

Popular categories

BBC

BBC

News

News

Leisure/Lifestyle

Leisure/Lifestyle

Politics

Politics

Digital

Digital

Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs