 So welcome everybody to the next panel. What is the future of reporting from conflict zones? So the moderator for our panel is Kevin Barron who is the executive editor of defense one. So one nice thing This is our fifth Conference fifth annual conference and Kevin has been with us since we began and is a media partner for this year's future security Forum he's worked for over 20 years in Washington DC covering international affairs the military Congress the Pentagon for foreign policy National journals stars and stripes in the Boston Globe where he ran an investigative project for five years He's a contributor a national military analyst for NBC News and MSNBC And he is twice the winner of a George poke award. So we welcome Kevin and the panel Thank you and thank you everyone for sticking with us into the afternoon hours My name is Kevin Barron the editor of defense one I'm excited to host this panel on the future of conflict reporting I'll introduce our panelists to get us started Osma Khan is this award-winning investigative journalist New York Times contributing New York Times magazine contributing writer and Professor at Columber Columbia journalism school you're writing a book for Random House investigating the human cost of America's precision airwars looking forward to that And says her accountability reporting it can be Her accountability reporting this is worded wrong. You won the National Magazine Award. That's what it says Masha Gassin is Eric and Wendy Schmidt fellow at New America here and staff writer at the New Yorker Author of ten books of nonfiction including the future is history how totalitarianism reclaimed Russia which won the 2017 National Book Award and finally Nick waters over there senior open source investigated with Bellingcat His work there is focused on the conflict in Syria including the adoption of commercial drones by Substate actors and the use of chemical weapons 2018 shortlisted for the European press prize for innovation for his work before Bellingcat Nick spent four years as a British Army infantry officer a year completing an MA at King's College London and two years working in cyber security And he says don't call him a hacker Well, thank you all for joining us I'll I said I'd lay out a little bit of a some I think topics or a landscape for us to discuss for the future of conflict reporting I've been running defense one for six years now. I've been depending on for over 10 years And in Washington for 20 and we've seen a lot of change in how conflicts are covered A lot of that is followed how the how wars have changed and how developed especially if you think with our American lens from Washington In that time covering everything since 9-11 to the types of conflicts that exist today And one of the challenges that I face I was telling them backstage is that I work for Atlantic media the same company that owns the Atlantic magazine And I work for our owner our boss David Bradley who is publicly known as being involved in a lot of the attempts to Recover us hostages overseas Including reporters and so one of the barriers in my own line of work not only the budget for covering conflicts the safety of covering conflicts the editorial guidance is Having the wherewithal to do all those things and to do them safely As wars shift from large ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan where you either went with a military embed in official Capacity or you took your chances on your own as those were shifted to When we've seen the last few years in Syria and Iraq and now into places like Yemen or Somalia or Niger Indonesia countless places around the world So Osmond, why don't you start us off with you had some thoughts on the state of conflict reporting now some of the challenges So just to give some context I've spent much of the last several years doing systematic ground investigation in countries including Afghanistan Iraq and Syria and I just want to address some of the constraints in doing that kind of work that point to some of the bigger problems in the industry That actually give me a pretty dismal outlook on what the future of conflict reporting actually is one of the great things about Contemporary war is that fewer Americans are dying than ever before and part of that is a shift when it comes to Conducting a lot of these wars via air and having a smaller footprint on the ground That's a wonderful thing, but it also has these other effects It means that a lot of the American public when their colleagues when they're friends when people from their neighborhoods Are not losing their lives in that war that they're a lot less not just interested in that war But even less aware that it's happening So you have a public that's far less aware of many of the wars that are being fought in their names and As a result you have media organizations They're not prioritizing covering that even though the war in Afghanistan is now in its 18th year You have less coverage than you did of course when American troops were deployed in far higher numbers And on top of that you have a decline in transparency And that's partly the result of the fact that when there are fewer reporters on the ground and fewer reporters doing this Kind of work. There's less of a precedent and sort of standard set for engagement in the first place This is one major obstacle But another really relates to news organizations themselves and what they're able to prioritize, you know We've seen increased risks in places like Syria and Iraq, you know, it's not reporting on the Taliban It's reporting on ISIS and we know what ISIS does to journalists. We've watched the videos It's what really served as a as a waking up call for so many Americans about this group But it's a lot harder to operate on the ground. It's riskier and it's more costly What few people know is that even major news organizations with large budgets like the Associated Press now turn to funders Like the Pulitzer Center to fund some of their major reporting projects projects that just as recently as two weeks ago For example from Yemen the Associated Press won a Pulitzer that was funded by this Organization outside of the AP so it's costly. It's risky and More than anything you're starting to see a shift towards more open-source reporting and and Nick will be talking about a lot of that This has made significant Contributions, but at the same time, you know when a journalist isn't on the ground You're now losing valuable context and history and I just I'll give you an example A lot of the reporting I do is you know, half of it half of these interviews are just sitting down with tribal elders or Sheikhs and Understanding the history and local context of a very specific place that I'm in and so I just returned from Afghanistan I was looking at both airstrikes and night raids in Helmins Kandahar and Nangarhar which have seen a spike in all of this and military pressure by US and Afghan forces in 2019 and what's really striking to me is that you know we've seen this Unprecedented surge and night raids and airstrikes this year an increase in civilian deaths and there's very little reporting on it But there are a few factors that really stand out to me when it comes to understanding local context and history Last month two women were detained in Helmand province Now if you know the area and you know local context, you know how incredibly Dangerous and complicated this can be All you have to do is rewind back and look at 1994 When two women disappeared near a checkpoint in Sangesar Kandahar A local cleric was upset that these women were detained and he went looking for them He found their bodies at a nearby checkpoint He rallied the local community And they went door to door to sort of oust these These militia leaders that had been engaged in this kind of corruption That cleric's name was Mullah Omar and in two years The Taliban had taken Kabul It originated from the arrest detention and decapitation the murder of these two women The detention of women is fairly unprecedented in these 18 years of war when you're looking at what's happening in Afghanistan But unless you know that local context, you know that history It's very hard to put in context what Current actions and the results they're having are And so we're going to see a flattening when there are fewer journalists on the ground doing that kind of historical research That are doing that kind of local context that renders and individuals behaviors and actions understandable to outsiders We're now getting reporting that doesn't prioritize the lives of others Which is an essential part of any conflict reporting and the third and last Results, um, you know one of the major challenges We're seeing overall as a decline in government and military transparency with these wars And part of that is just a result of that smaller footprint You have less engagement to begin with but a large part of it is actually just a post 9 11 shift Where reporters and others have been willing to say okay We understand when militaries and governments cite operational security as a rationale for denying information um, but I want to just briefly Really focus on Afghanistan for a second and just talk about resolute support the nato us led mission there Very few reporters can get embeds right now I've been unable to get one despite months of trying And there is a fundamental problem when the american public doesn't care and when these sort of trends that I talked about work together in unison To make it possible that you know, I can spend my time investigating incidents of civilian death report them to resolute support And not get an answer for a month Right, that's troubling not even to get a single response and you're writing for the new york times magazine That's not no outlet But this is the kind of contemporary landscape we're looking at when there are lots of reporters looking at iraq in syria It's a different story. You'll get a response But when it's Afghanistan and the public's attention has turned away when that kind of commitment to transparency And the willingness to really be open about the actions that are being taken You're going to get both less accountability reporting And you're going to get less reporting that really centers the lives of others and the kinds of actions and behaviors We need to understand most to truly understand war and its consequences Thank you for that in I don't know if you were implying or But just last week the cigar the special inspector general for afghanistan Said just what you were saying. There's so there's an article on defense one about it. You can go read it That transparency is at an all-time low For lots of reasons, but he really his job is to be the wash dog for DoD and the us government puts it on on them and one aspect of that is the shift So much of the fighting is done by special operations forces that are inherently more secretive Rightful wrongfully we can talk about that if you want And the a lot of the other barriers of getting reporters in Um Masha take us through you've been through other wars and other times What do you see today that compares to what you've seen before or what types of ideas do you have going forward for what's needed? Well, that's a very kind way of saying i'm like the old person on this panel and I my my war reporting days are pretty long ago. I I covered The wars in the Balkans I covered both of the wars in Chechnya and I actually was Weirdly for several weeks the only American reporter on the ground in belgrade what when the nato bombing began In 1999 because I was the only American reporter carrying a russian passport So I didn't get expelled from the city and now in retrospect. I feel like I I witnessed that shift from From a very discreet sort of era and war reporting when From one thing, uh, you know when when We weren't observing bombs falling from the sky when that wasn't the substance of warfare And that that shift really happened in march 1999 uh in uh in the bombing of of yugoslavia and Also, I think when there was an assumption That reporters in conflict zones were distinctly not combatants right um and You know I in retrospect that was a very brief period When reporters were out of uniform unarmed And assumed to be separate and apart from from from the from the combatants Basically from the end of world war two up until 9 11 And I think it's you know, we have to mourn that period because I think that was that was a golden era in war reporting and what we're seeing now Is very very different from that and um and that creates the The possibility of conflicts that go entirely uncovered Um, and I feel like I have uh, you know often when I when I when I when I talk about american politics I sort of use russia as they as they absolute logical extreme of what can happen when this happens So, um, I have that experience In the early aughts uh in russia when I was uh, I was a magazine editor there Um, basically people stopped sending reporters to chit chat for a variety of reasons Probably the most important of them was that was that it was too dangerous But also because the state just didn't want the conflict covered But for independent outlets it was too dangerous And I remember this moment in I think was 2002 when a reporter a very young reporter Wanted to know how to write up a news item And the news item was on the release of some russian soldiers who had been held in chechnya And I kept trying to talk to him about how to write it up And then I realized that he didn't know There was a war in chechnya And so he didn't know how to write it up And what do you do when when a conflict falls entirely outside the narrative? Right like do you write in the lead? There's a war in chechnya And now we're gonna tell you you know what happened there I mean that's an extreme of what can happen, but I think that's that's that's very close to what asma is talking about Yeah, well if adam baron is still in the audience who covers yemen I think he might you know have that answer In the same kind of way at some point you have to you may have to say there is a war here Now here's what he needs to know about it Nick you also working in yemen But and you're you're like you're the representation of the future of crowdsourcing with bellingcats So tell us what's coming up. I'm so I'm gonna take a slightly different talk How many people here have smartphones? Just work up your hands. We've had a smartphone Everybody How many people here especially the military guys or major people? How many of you use fitness apps to keep track of how well you do at fitness? Yeah, a few people. Okay. How many people have social media accounts here? Pretty much everyone. Okay the amount of data The amount of data that we're producing is incredible And people love taking pictures and videoing events that happen around them So if a artillery unit set up Outside the the white house you're gonna have loads of people stand around and film it as it fires off rounds Okay, and people are then going to post that onto social media and show all their friends This awesome awesome thing that they saw and people do this even in the face Of danger So there was an incident a few months ago in the uk where there was an ied on an underground train didn't fully detonate But you've got videos of people walking up to a smoking partially detonated ied and going look at this ied And then posting it to twitter. Okay So people are taking videos and images. They think that are interesting But when you go to a A conflict area or where these kind of things are happening The local population also have smartphones. They also have social media accounts. They also have the desire to tell their story So whether that be iraq whether that be syria whether that be ukraine afghanistan or yemen You are getting people who are local citizens who are filming Taking pictures uploading it to social media So what bellincats become very good at is taking that Information and verifying it and then piecing together that data to tell a story So we've managed to look at some pretty interesting events so working out who shot down mh17 or how it was shot down as well and Probably a lot of you may be familiar with the scripal The scripal poisonous last year And we identified who they were looking at leaked databases and there's a huge amount of this data out there And although we are doing some really really interesting work I also think that It's always best when it's combined with traditional journalism with people on the ground Because there are limitations to open source investigation Not just because of the biases of people who upload this material, but also of your own bias as well There's also biases that people don't even really think of so data availability bias So we're far more likely Or i'm far more likely to look at events that are happening in syria or yemen because I understand the context And I know where to get the information from then looking at events that happen in sub-saharan africa, for example So although open source has a lot of opportunities There are also limitations that I think people need to think about and it's always best Or that kind of open source investigation is always best when it's combined with traditional Investigation with people on the ground as well So how do you how do you see all these you know older and newer techniques combining? So I immediately have my editor hat on You know we defense one know you know your work at belly and cat and it comes into our our play by our technology reporter Who's savvy enough to know that you exist that that kind of information is out there to help write a story Versus a traditional field reporter who's you know got he's got his you know His kit and his in his on the ground And I think specifically for the counterterrorism hotspots that like I said earlier are mostly Involving special operations forces who don't bring reporters as embeds or don't want them there or in locations that are so Dangerous or immoral too expensive to rescue to be involved in and I often tell them This is part of the future is you you know you silent warriors are great and that's a that's a noble creed Except in the era that we're in now when everything you do is it's going to be on youtube before Anybody could get it onto the ap anyway So how do you see I mean how do you see this and making a difference at all perhaps in afghanistan? Do you are you noticing a change a change as a result of social media use? Sure, I mean I know afghanistan asked now because that's a longer story We've we've seen it go through the the heyday of embeds to on the any now But yet there are still plenty of this happening. I mean what's I we hear about Bombings and Kabul before you know you hear about them on social media before you hear them on the wires I mean it's it's true that You know news will circulate quickly via whatsapp. I mean I'm in you know I'm constantly talking to people on the ground and I'm getting reports from sungin In helman province in afghanistan, which has seen a spate of attacks in 2019 and so sometimes I'll just wake up to Really bloody images and videos from these people who are There on the ground and I'll wake up to them in the morning And they are not something I can find online to be frank They're not something I can google for and find on youtube These are individuals who will pass this a lot of it is not necessary I mean afghanistan is different and in a place like sungin where there's limited internet access You'll see a lot of phone to phone Transfer of materials. So if people are using android phones, they will transfer to one another and eventually it will filter to someone Who will upload it so there's actually a period of time usually before something like this shows up online Whereas in iraq and syria that would move much more quickly afghanistan is different But again without that public interest and without that public attention. I mean it's been 18 years nobody Nobody cares right now about what's unfortunately most americans do not care About this war right now and so these reports that i'm getting these people that i'm talking to I'll very rarely see it reported despite there being you know a wealth of evidence Nick I mean the other way around how are how are how are you interacting with more traditional reporters to get your information out Is it is it easy? Is it is there a thirst for it? Or is it harder sell? Because of the the nature of the investigations we do I think we haven't had Too much of an issue with that The big example being With the script our stuff. We had a partner publisher within russian the insider who went to one of the One of the gru guys villages Asked around showed them a picture of the guy and like oh, yes, you know that's him But we were also on the the common project we're working on In yemen and looking at sideline coalition airstrikes in yemen One of the other people who has been Or the person who is leading the project round shave She has spent a long period of time on the ground in yemen Investigating these strikes on the ground in yemen and she brings a kind of contextual understanding that I simply do not have So i'm very good at looking at a video and saying yeah, there was definitely filmed there I can look at other source of information and say it was filmed around this time Between in this date range using different kind of tools to show you that and verify some information But without raren's understanding of the context and of the conflict itself We wouldn't be able to do this project So when you get this combination of traditional journalism people who've been on the ground understand the context understand the local networks as well That's where it really really becomes very powerful Can I just make a really obvious introduction I mean, I think that's We have to think about what the purpose of journalism is and The stories that I remember writing from war zones that I feel were really important Were you know stories about what it's like to try to get health care for your child During a war, right? And like following this woman for days as she tried to get through checkpoints and and to get help For a child of the wrong ethnicity and Hanging out with students in belgrade for weeks while bombs were falling on their city And trying to describe the change in their attitudes and the change in their You know how they became paranoid and how they also Became hostile to foreigners and how all sorts of things happen to them over time and Obviously you have to be there on the ground to write about that And it is not the same as writing about who shut down the Malaysian Airlines flight, which was incredibly important to work But you know, what is the meaning of conflict? What is the meaning of war? What what is the human cost of it? I don't think you can write about it unless you're there and unless you're actually talking to people That's a good point. I I think you're right. There's there's a spectrum of Reporting that falls under the rubric of war reporting, you know The this is part of the New York Times while I started at war blog, right? It was to or to restart it was to tell stories on the ground that are More like you're saying at all the different types of experiences in war that that can happen that way We're we're getting within 10 minutes and we actually do have a hard stop on this panel because the comment on the marine Corps is coming next and I'm not about to you know Mets with the comment on the marine corps if you've met Miller, you know He's a great guy. So think of questions for our comments I can see some more reporters in the audience too. So Before we do that, can I just jump in here because I think nick should should really Talk about something very quickly, but I just had the Pleasure of going to London and working with him and Ravan who he mentioned is from Yemen Who we're conducting a sample of an investigation into a sample of airstrikes Saudi-led airstrikes that happened in Yemen and Ravan has such incredible experience doing that on the ground Can you just briefly mention the project and what's coming out this week? Because I think it's very significant and and they should all know about that. Yeah, uh, so It's called the emin project It's Ravan's brainchild who is an absolute driving force. So I've been working with her on it. Uh, and we've been looking at Uh, Satellite coalition airstrikes have been happening in Yemen And not just ones have been happening in the last, you know, a few months. We're looking at them historically We're looking at them in scale as well So you want to identify themes that have been happening on the ground whether that be say targeting bridges targeting aid potentially targeting civilians or civilian objects And we aim to do this on a scale that no one else has really done before At a level of detail that no one else has ever really done before so it's really the application of open source investigation not only for Identifying themes within conflict but also potentially using them in an illegal sense as well And getting that information to the point where it can actually be evidence and use in court So when you're talking about What journalism is i'm not entirely sure what we're doing is actually journalism it's investigation And it has journalistic aspects to it, but i'm not entirely sure if it fits directly into that actually Good point. All right, can I get a question from the audience? back brother Thanks, um, david starman senior policy analyst here at new america I want to ask um, both nick and asmad about how you're reporting on sort of Who has conducted strikes the attribution issue has been changed by The proliferation of parties conducting airstrikes And also conducting drone strikes whether it's non-state actors the yemen case where at least the ua us And possibly saudi arabia are conducting drones and then all of them airstrikes And whether you're having attribution issues in afghanistan or not david you're so smart you always ask the bingo question This is this is something that has dramatically transformed the environment In many of the places that we're talking about, you know years ago You would have known which conflict actors had an air force and were able to conduct certain kinds of attacks Today that field has become increasingly muddled and I saw that in iraq. You especially see it in syria when you have the russian air force Involved you have the syrian air force involved You have the us-led coalition with a number of actors apparently also involved And it's hard to trace back, you know, who conducted what and so when I was in iraq. I did a sample a ground sample I went to the sites of nearly 150 airstrikes But there was a a cluster-based sample of 103 that I took the coordinates of and went to the us-led coalition and asked Did you conduct these and I had to ask that because the iraqi air force was also conducting airstrikes And at first I was told we can only look at four for you We can't tell you, you know, it's too much of our time and resources to try to delineate whether or not we did the others And it took it was a lot of wrangling But eventually they did and that was that was something that made that sample valuable Otherwise, I wouldn't know who was carrying out what and what the rate of civilian casualties actually were for us-led coalition airstrikes But to do that in a place like syria is a lot harder because you can't just go to the coalition You know how multiple actors and in places like Afghanistan and elsewhere it brings the challenge of The government that you're questioning or talking to being able to Deny you information imply that it was somebody else and make it very difficult for you to actually find out What's happening on the ground that muddling is whether it's intended or not it seeks to reduce transparency and has the effect of Limiting what a journalist is able to do in very very significant ways and that's what the exporting of the air program of you know Missile systems of equipment. So when the Saudi-led coalition is using it or when the Emiratis are using it and others are using it They're using American technologies and weapons But there's very little ability to get an answer from them when you have multiple actors in these conflicts when America sells weapons to these places They don't also sell the they don't also Include in that a contract that we have oversight over what gets used where like that doesn't exist right now in the contracts that we've had So it's a really messy messy scenario. Yeah, it can be really difficult especially in a coalition A situation where coalitions are operating Although in Syria and in Yemen, you know one side has a traditional air force And so therefore an airstrike usually indicates being carried out by that particular side. You also sometimes have Instances where that makes it more difficult So the Saudi-led coalition has been admitting to certain airstrikes But there are some which they're very adamant they did not carry out Within Yemen. So that makes it difficult for us to work out Who actually conducted the airstrike with the Saudi-led coalition or perhaps another actor who is operating in that space? The ideal that we love is getting serial numbers from ammunition fragments You know, you can identify specific kinds of munition being used by specific actors But we don't get that a lot of the time. So a lot of the time we're relying on statements by By particular actors to that conflict which can make it quite difficult to Conduct very specific attribution. Usually we can only really get it down to You know, this group of people this side Rather than a specific country We're in our last couple of minutes. I wanted to get all of your thoughts on Something I mentioned I asked a question earlier about the constituency for this type of news and how important it might be Both for the conference area trying to cover but also for the just the practice of the journalism that we're trying to do Meaning You said more than once on this panel. No one cares about Afghanistan I agree to the sense of I I know what stories click and what stories don't on our website And I you can ask the publics You can ask voters they are asked about what their top issues are and it's you know, it's never afghanistan It's not it's not worse at all But we are entering a new election cycle Where there are you know, america's global leadership america's involvement in these interventions overseas is on the table with a wide variety of of Potential outcomes depending on who becomes the next president or is still president for the next four years Um, how do you see or do you even do you even think about that kind of stuff in your work about not just That it's important that the women in afghanistan story is told but that american Or other countries electorates are paying attention to it and it's getting on air and it's getting play and it's reaching the policy makers I think it has to reach a very high level of writing Because you're now looking at an audience that needs to be they need to enter this and so it means you find a character who Americans kid are captivated by frankly And so if you you know if you have time to read an investigation that I worked on It came out in november 2017 in the times magazine. It was called the uncounted The main character in that investigation was an iraqi man in mosul who lived in the united states for a number of years And I did this much broader investigation of airstrikes between his story, right? Because I knew americans would want to read this man's story that they could relate to him on some fundamental level That there were parts of his experience That made that would keep an american reader like moving on from paragraph to paragraph. I think we're almost out of time So I was just dropped our time. Do you want a quick reaction comment? Well people don't care about facts as a general rule people care about emotions and this that is again Why we need people on the ground reporting stuff and people who have resources who have who are drawing a salary Rather than being paid per story Which is increasingly rare And people who are also safe, which means they have insurance and You know and it can can work there with certainty and security We have a very difficult constituency I mean the people who read us generally journalist policy makers anyway So we don't need to we don't view our role really as introducing that emotion into our stories. Indeed. We try to reduce it We hope to Clarify and provide those facts that other people can base their based their stories on so we have a very different Role to play I think Thank you. This is a topic I could talk about for a long time Unfortunately, we can't but feel free to find this afterward I'll leave you with a couple stats when you go to the committee for tech journalists website They have their they have data up on the that they keep front and center on the on their home page Five journalists have been killed in 2019 already 250 have been imprisoned were imprisoned in 2018 and 60 are missing globally still today Uh, if you haven't been to the new zeem in a while, I highly encourage it And thank you to our panelists for giving us your thoughts