britain 50 years ago. they wept, they dropped to their knees, they kissed the sand on the beach behind me here. since then, they've gone to inspect some of the ruins of their old homes on this extraordinary island that really almost no—one has been to for these past decades. strict control from britain about who could actually get there until mauritius made this very bold move to send its own boats without securing permission from britain, simply going ahead and coming here. and if you can see behind me, the men, the mauritian officials, they're busy planting a concrete base for a flagpole, and then they're going to raise the mauritian flag over this island, as on a couple of other reefs and islands in the coming days. a really very defiant, bold move by mauritius, which says, "look, international law is on our side. only five other countries in the whole world now support britain's claim to the chagos

islands. "it is time," the officials here are saying, "for britain to accept internationaljustice and hand the islands back to mauritius, back to the chagosians." certainly those on mauritius desperate to come back and stay here. chagosians in britain no more divided — many of them still supporting britain and its claim to the islands. andrew and its claim to the islands. harding. let's update with andrew harding. let's update you with the headlines. the armed forces minister warns the uk will not be able to fly british nationals out of ukraine if russia invades — and says russia's in a position where it could attack "at no notice". the ukrainian president says warnings of a russian attack is creating "panic" and demands to see firm proof of a planned invasion. the best friend for enemies — that is panic in our country, and all this information that helps only for panic doesn't help us. borisjohnson receives a legal

questionnaire from police investigating lockdown parties at downing street and whitehall. in paris, french police fire tear gas at demonstrators — it's after a convoy carrying protesters against coronavirus restrictions made it into the capital. doctors say thousands more lives could be saved by paying attention to earlier symptoms of heart attacks — a new campaign to spot the signs is launched by nhs england. more headlines at 5pm. now on bbc news, it's time for the media show. hello. some big topics on the media show today. in the west, it's reported as the ukraine crisis — 100,000 russian troops assembled near the border. president macron is on a whirlwind diplomatic mission this week to avert a conflict. but i want to look at how the situation is being reported in russia and in ukraine.

is there the same sense of urgency in domestic media? how are both sides using the media to advance their own objectives? francis scarr is in moscow with bbc monitoring and he's going to help us do that. francis, on a lighter note first, you'll have seen those images of putin and macron sat at either end of it gigantic negotiating table this week. is this a table the kremlin rolls out for photo opportunities when they want to see the idea through the media that the west should sit at a distance from russia, or are all the tables like that? as you say, katie, plenty of political commentators have been saying that this was about political projection, about putin making macron feel uncomfortable while they were talking. but actually, in the last couple of weeks, he's also held talks with the president of iran and the prime minister of hungary, both of whose country arguably enjoy better relations with russia than france does. was he still using that table? yeah, at the very same table. in fact, lots of other people are saying this

is more about putin's weariness over coronavirus. just to give you another example, back in december he held his marathon annual press conference, and anyjournalist who wanted to attend the event had to pass three pcr tests and, once they got to the venue, they had to go through a kind of disinfection tunnel which sprayed them with sanitiser. and when they eventually got into the hall they were a good 20 metres away from the russian president anyway. 0k, more from you, francis, in a moment. we'll bare that in mind. but going on, what's going on near the ukrainian border is also the subject of much analysis by open—source investigators. these are the online sleuths, often amateur, who are trauling through social media posts and satellite imagery to track the military hardware that's on the move in the region. such investigative techniques have now been co—opted by mainstream news outlets. and we're going to hear about the huge impact some of them have achieved in the last few months. we've got some of the best in the business with us, including alison killing who won a pulitzer prize for her work last year. alison used satellite imagery

to identify how the chinese government was building a massive infrastructure to detain muslims. allison, i mentioned how open—source investigators are often amateur — they're certainly not all trained journalist. and your dayjob is in fact as an architect. and here you are winning a pulitzer. yeah, i mean, i'm trained as an architect and i worked in commercial practice for a number of years but, in fact, my work has been moving away from construction and building for quite some time. i would say for the past four or five years, in fact. so this sort of work is now in fact my dayjob. fantastic, and we'll hear much more about that later. but let's start with francis scarr, one of the guys at bbc monitoring in moscow. francis, i referred to the situation as the ukraine crisis — that's because that's how it's headlined in the western media. is this the kind of language the russian media is using? well, if we take state tv for example, which is the most popular source of information for russians — around two thirds of people here watch it on a regular basis.

the pictures as you can imagine is completely different. any accusations of an imminent russian invasion are being roundly dismissed as anti—russian hysteria, or simply complete nonsense. and these deliveries of apparently defensive weapons by the us and uk to ukraine are being described as actually whipping up tensions in the region. and actually they're saying that the west are simply pumping the ukraine full of weapons and preparing it to attack the rebels in the east — the donetsk and lugansk republics. and what about the ukrainian media? sarah rainsford, our colleague, the bbc correspondent, said that east of kyiv many ukrainians that she met there said they hadn't watched the news since 2014 to protect their nerves. well, ukrainian media are largely behind the government there. they're obviously saying ukraine is the victim and russia is the aggressor. the rebel republics in the east are terrorist organisations, according to them.

but of course, they're really having to play thisjuggling game between statements from the west — western governments are saying that russia is imminently about to invade — and the ukrainian government, which is saying "hang on, calm down, guys, things aren't quite as drastic as that quite yet." regarding people's anxiety in the ukraine, i was speaking to a colleague in our kyiv team the other day and she was saying that there are definitely a lot of people who have kind of resigned themselves to the fact there may be a russian invasion. they can't do anything about it if it happens so in the meantime they may as well save their mental health by avoiding all the anxiety of watching the news. right. so clearly the way it's being reported in the region is very different depending on where you are. but what about this from andrey pertsev, the journalists at meduza, a news website that's based in latvia so as to bypass russian censorship. he says that some western reporting in the ukraine is basically akin to alarmist click bait. he cites a report in bild, in germany, last weekend that claim to have putin's plan for the full scale

invasion that would involve internment camps for ukrainians, and he calls out foreign entertainment which he says leads ordinary russians to trust the west even less. what do you think about that? well, i think it's definitely a problem that many russians, especially young people here — they hold the west in high regard. and they want a future for their own country where the media is as free as it is in the west. and they're looking at some of these really speculative reports about what putin might be planning in ukraine. and lots of reputable outlets publishing reports citing anonymous intelligence sources in the us and the uk, which the journalists aren't verifying. and they're asking, "well, how can we trust this any more then we're trusting what our own government is telling us?" and just going back to that giant negotiating table, you spotted that putin was using the informal when addressing macron. which some say is his way of signalling to russian viewers that they're friends in russia isn't some sort of pariah.

how do you read it? in russian, there are two ways of addressing someone. this formal and informal. some of our listeners may recall steve rosenberg talking about his interview with alexander lukashenko the leader of belarus who used a less formal address for steve. and steve took this as almost belittlement in an attempt to insult him. i think what putin was doing with macron is slightly different here. he was trying to say that i am part of the club of nations, among the high table of global politics was up and this of course is a really big statement from bruton because russia has been kicked out of organisations like the g8 which is now the g7.

and he wants to show that russia is there in the club ultimately. let me bring in benjamin strick. i wanted to look at the role open—source investigators are playing for the year the investigations director at the centre for investigation resistance which is not for profit dedicated to exposing governments with to be an expert in sifting through satellite imagery, social media, anything digital that's out there, hence the term open—source. what are your team finding in respect of and ukraine? our team, we're not really establishing any findings. what we're really trying to do is identify what's really happening on the ground. because while we are identifying narratives that are coming up we are not necessarily to counter our battle narratives but rather pick out and tease out the details of what's happening on the ground. as you said, there's so much information that's doing that — from locals, vehicles driving past, aerial traffic to satellite imagery. it's a combination of all those sorts of things that when cross referenced with the narratives that are coming out in state media

and different organisations and representatives that there is a difference in occurrence of perhaps less intimidation of military build—ups in comparison to what we're really seeing, which is quite heavy intimidation of these build—ups. before we came on air i went down a rabbit hole on twitter looking at your stuff, what you're pointing out and other open source investigators were tracking, as you say those military convoys the geo—locating videos by identifying roadsides, bends in the road and we will come on some of those techniques in a moment but ijust wonder, how do you know that what's being posted hasn't been put up deliberately to fool the likes of you? that's the dangerous game. i think the best thing to say is that as allison may have mentioned before, none of us are really qualified in this field. we enter this field without a specific degree or registration. but that's the best thing

about it is when i put something out under my name, most people won't believe it. but because i'm transparent and most of us are transparent they can dig through and see what ourfindings are. that's the best thing about a lot of this that we're sitting online. someone might post a video imposed a location but cross—referencing and identifying that information with trees, signs — a mcdonald's sign in the background for instance — might actually reveal that that information is true. and that's all were able to use those tangible facts to cross reference and improve what's actually there on the ground. and that's how we prove that link and that proof in the putting then. francis, a us congresswoman was lampooned by some last week when she advised ukrainians if russia doesn't age you said, flood the internet with pictures and videos with all the affairs and content you can get.

for the russian people to see that their leader is a fraud and a thug. does putin fear embarrassing posts on social media? well, on the one hand the kremlin does keep its fingerfirmly on the pulse of public opinion. and even commissions poles to see how people are viewing sensitive issues. but i personally think she's misread russian society here because for the last few years, especially on state tv, people are being fed this cocktail of conspiracy theories and sometimes even just outright lies every time russia is accused of doing something maligned by the west. i personally think it would take something much greater, we're talking about the photos and videos of thousands and thousands of body bags coming back from ukraine to really cause a shift in russian public opinion. francis, thank you very much. i promised at the start of the programme to look at how the digital sleuthing has now been adopted by a lot of mainstream news outlets let me introduce you to the rest of my panel. alexa is the executive director

of the human rights centre at the berkeley school of law, allison is the winner of the 2021 a pulitzer prize in reporting. haley willis as visual investigations at the new york times. and haley, if i can start with you. welcome to the media show. you've been investigating civilian casualties in the us and drone strikes. of course, alljournalists are looking to get impact with the reporting but this is pretty impressive. two weeks ago, the us defence secretary issued an order to military top brass that can be summarised as, do more, do more to kill the innocent. he said the protection of civilians remains vital to the ultimate success of our operations. there was lloyd austin. explain your newspaper's role in exposing what the us military was getting tragically wrong and this change in policy. yeah, absolutely. this announcement by secretary austen came after a series of investigations released over the past few months.

really spearheaded by the reporting of asma khan who's been covering this issue for many years as well as several other and our team of investigations. we've done a lot of look into how air strikes have been botched in specific context, looking at the shadowy task persons that are calling these drives. as well as looking into actually how the us military reviews claims of civilian casualties. asma was able to get a huge trove of documents which are basically the military as internal assessments of these claims. and a big part of that was looking into what they were getting wrong. so what their intelligence was getting wrong and then how they were failing to truly investigate wrongdoing. and the visual investigations team in terms of looking at that process and errors in it, especially basic errors that are very similar to the type of work that open source investigators do as well as individually investigating some of these botched strikes, including one in kabul last summer. yes, let's pick up on that one. a lot of us will remember it. it was just as kabul fell

to the taliban back in august. in actual fact, they'd targeted an aid worker driving home from work and they killed a total of ten civilians. tell us, how were you able to prove this really quite soon after the incident? what techniques did you use and what material were you using? this happened, artistically remember on a sunday and we were monitoring accounts on social media and we started seeing videos come out of what looked like the aftermath of something. smoke rising from a residential home, people pouring water over a courtyard, and these videos were coming out at the same time reports were coming out that the us had carried out a jury strike in kabul. our team immediately set to work — the first thing we did was try to geo—locate which is something that you and ben have spoken have already. where did this happen? there was very few details at the time but there were some details at the us had released about how far from the airport. the first thing we did

was try to locate where it happened. immediately as we did we release that information publicly on twitter. that's a huge part of what we do, we want our methodology to be publicly available. that allowed reporters to access the site and to do investigations as quickly as possible. in the weeks following, several of my colleagues continued to dig into the deeper details of this. who was targeted, why, and really uncovered that almost everything that the military said had happened that day was false. they analysed videos and photos of the actual site along with weapons experts and found no evidence of what the military had said was a secondary explosion from explosives that were in the vehicle. they were able to get security camera footage that showed the movements of a body who was targeted at leading up to when the strike happened. it basically showed no evidence of nefarious activity and actually showed something as simple as him

carrying waterjugs may have been perceived by the us military as him carrying explosives. there's no evidence that he was connected to the islamic state. very quickly after this report came out, the us military really have to backtrack out a lot of the explanations they made for carrying out the strike. amazing the power of this open—source investigation. i just want to hear more about these techniques because they are i hope our audience will find absolutely riveting. allison, tell us how you used your training as an architect to work out from satellite photos that the chinese government were building camp. as they claim they are a necessary measure against terrorism. sure.

i worked with a buzzfeed reporter and a developer on this. when we started working in 2018 it was believed that there were 1200 camps in existence but only a handful of those had been found. and so we were keen to find the rest. it's very, very difficult to work there. some of that is because it's a very large region and what's more important is that access is very difficult. manyjournals in china have now been denied visas, it's very difficult to go there and people have been followed, detained and their sources intimidated. it's very difficult to work there effectively. and we turn to satellite imagery. we spent a little while researching potential techniques and we discovered the chinese version of google maps that there was censorship, that when you'd navigated to a place

suddenly this light grey square would appear over the location. you zoom in again and it would be gone immediately. it looks a little bit like the map was broken but we quickly realised that it wasn't, that we could reproduce us. also it was happening in all of the locations where we knew camps to be. so we started to map that censorship and could go and look at those same locations and google earth and see what was there. and that allowed us to identify what we believed is very close to be to full network of camps. we used a lot of satellite imagery for that. so that was identifying key features of camps. whether that was very thick perimeter walls, like two metres thick, guard towers at the corners of those, whether barbed wire in courtyards with up and those things helped us to determine whether a camp of the place was likely to be a camp or not. we corroborated that

using eyewitness reports, we spoke to dozens of former detainees, several who were able to point us directly to where they were being held for support government tender documents in our media reports. and you won the pulitzer prize for this? yeah, we won the pulitzer prize for international reporting for this work. that's amazing. i want to hear more about your work in a moment. i'm trying to speak. i want to hear about your work at the moment because you're not only concentrating on ukraine and russia, you're also doing a lot of analysis of myanmar.

we're getting to a point within 24 hours to identify when the village has been destroyed and document that not only on satellite imagery— but on the ground, which in a justiciali and accountability purposes is really good. what steps do you take to protect people that might�*ve given you information? whether that's video or whatever you get from them? that's a really good - question because we often like to work with media, we get asked a lot - to work with media. at the same time, some - of the information that we do collect even if it is from social . media, we take that onus to not share that with them because it's i amplifying further that materiall that might put them in danger, | but it's also that analysis on top of it about geolocation. that can be quite dangerous. to a villager who is filmed a fire in another village and that might actually track them back - to where they are living.

with things like that were actually keeping quite private _ and sending that to the justice i and accountability mechanisms. safe to do so, we'll share i information with the media so that they can report on that. you now teach a lot of these skills. in fact, i think haley is one of yourformer pupils. is itjustjournalists that want to learn them? not at all. actually the way began working in the spaces in 2011. when we were looking at the upcoming tenure anniversary of the international criminal court. one of the things we are observing his researches as one of those many of those cases are falling apart at relatively early stages of prosecution. according to the judges in the thousands of pages of documents we went through the judges were critical of the prosecutors for not bringing in information that would corroborate what survivors would say was happening

in their communities. so we began doing an assessment of what forms of information are out there that can come in and strengthen these narratives? so we began working with geospatial analysts, people working in analytics. of course that was a time when you were seeing a rise of social media and smartphones around the globe. the cost of satellite imagery and the access of it, the cost dropping and access increasing for laypeople. we began pulling that together and thinking about how we can really better meet the gold standard of any international prosecution. which is ultimately to triangulate your physical accidents, say your murder weapon, with information people are given you orally about what's been happening with the documentary evidence really these photos and videos can enrich sources of data. do you think the inability to work as a journalist in many parts of the word is why open—source techies have taken off in the last ten years?

journalist can't just wander around china or wander around myanmar. i think this work is at its strongest when its multidisciplinary, people that are coming at different angles. whether you're at it reporter, investigated on geospatial analyst, etc. we ultimately put together something called the berkeley protocol on to help standardise some of the terminology and understandings of how you do it. what ben was talking about, really verifying this data. giving the morality of it, given how it can be useful to you and i easily manipulated or contextualized with up i think with covid in particular, there was a recognition that it was even harder to get on the ground, not just the security considerations was obscene but certainly our shelter

allison, one of the striking points about the whole approach is the extent thatjournalists are relying on tech platforms. this is a whole new level of antagonism. if you are an open—source investigator you could find all your source material just taken away, facebook or twitter or whoever desires to moderate the evidence or hit with a court order to delete material by an overseas government. is that a real concern? i think as an open source investigator you absolutely rely on having access to data and large amounts of it. the data that i work with comes from two sources, it's social media or satellite imagery. access to both of those things can absolutely be a concern. we saw in the case of the war in syria that a lot of people were documenting what was happening around them, posting it to youtube and then youtube would be taking that down. yet it was providing potential

evidence of war crimes. and so there were efforts such as the syrian archive to quickly document all of those videos and preserve them in an archive so that they could be there for future research. similarly, satellite imagery is slightly different. and certainly we've been very lucky with our access to satellite imagery that we have a lot available in free tools such as google earth pro at high—resolution. we were lucky enough to have images every month or every few months so that we could see what was happening. the cost of satellite imagery can absolutely be a barrier where that public data doesn't already exist. alexa, you're the executive of the human rights centre, berkeley school of law,

which is a giveaway that you talked about in terms of bringing people justice. is having a global news outwork using your techniques more effective than an ngo? i actually think they're very complementary. l almost as if they are links in a chain. - if you look at what these - investigative reporters are doing, they both consumers, - digital open source information. but they're also putting a lot - of closed source information out into public spaces where it can thenl become leads for legal investigators to know who they should be talking to to get the testimonial _ evidence, what physical evidence they actually exist. _ for example, if they got over - a whatsapp communication a video or photograph of where an attack at taken place _ ultimately, i thinki what we are seeing evolve over the last five _ to ten years is more _ coordination and communication. i'm sorry, i'm going after her interact. we've run out of time. alexa, haley willis from the new york times,

that is all we have time for. thank you so much for watching. goodbye.

this is bbc news, i'm rebecca jones. the headlines at 5pm... the armed forces minister warns the uk will not be able to fly british nationals out of ukraine if russia invades, and says russia's in a position where it could attack "at no notice". this is re—escalating in a way that is really quite terrifying. this is the largest concentration of troops on the european continent in 70 years. —— this risks escalating. us presidentjoe biden speaks to russian president putin, as the ukrainian president says warnings of a russian attack are creating "panic". the best friend for enemies — that is panic in our country. and all this information, that helps only for panic. it doesn't help us. borisjohnson receives a legal questionnaire from police

investigating lockdown parties at downing street and whitehall.