Altered, misidentified and outright fictitious images are at the vanguard of the fake news ‘revolution’. They inundate our social media feeds, muddy public discourse and erode trust in the work of newsmakers. What practical tools can we use to meet this challenge?

At an Edit event in August 2020, moderator Rachael Dexter was joined by Stephanie Hunt, senior editor, Asia Pacific at Storyful. Storyful is a global social media agency that has carved out a specialty contextualising and verifying social media content. Hunt comes to this role following journalistic stints with BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, WIN, Prime and Seven.

Stephanie and Rachael raised a number of valuable resources for journalists seeking to verify the source, location and date of news images and video. 

Open source intelligence tools - A collection of open source tools for verifying images/videos

Bellingcat's online investigative toolkit - A fantastic overview of digital tools for investigative journalism

The Online News Association - A not-for-profit media association that draws together and supports digital journalists

Wikimapia - often contains more detailed satellite imagery than Google Maps

Crowdtangle - tracks how content spreads online

The Edit is a special program of events hosted by the Melbourne Press Club to help the next generation of Melbourne reporters, producers and editors hone their skills and develop their careers. We are grateful for the support of the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

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