Witness to war: how journalists can safeguard digital evidence for justice
Fri 17 April 2026
14:00
Free
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From Ukraine to Sudan to Gaza, journalists are often among the first to document war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law. Their reporting can become crucial evidence - but only if it is collected, verified, and preserved according to standards that maintain the chain of custody. Too often, valuable material becomes unusable in court due to gaps in documentation, metadata loss, or unclear workflows.
This panel brings together investigative reporters, digital forensics experts, and legal practitioners to explore how journalistic investigations can be made “court-ready” without compromising ethics, independence or safety. Panelists will discuss practical tools and methods for secure evidence preservation, emerging best practices in open-source investigations, and the importance of maintaining clear boundaries between the roles of journalists, activists, and lawyers. The conversation will offer actionable guidance for newsrooms working in conflict zones and for journalists aiming to ensure their documentation can support future accountability efforts.
Moderated by Frederik Obermaier.
Organised in association with paper trail media.
Modified more than a month ago
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Rebecca Bakos Blumenthal
Rebecca Bakos Blumenthal is Starvation and Humanitarian Crisis Lead at Global Rights Compliance (GRC). She is a legal adviser, specialising in international humanitarian law, criminal law and human rights law and has been engaged within GRC’s Starvation and Humanitarian Crisis Division, conducting in-depth open-source research, documentation and investigations on conflict-induced hunger, and legal analysis on various facets of the crime of starvation and violations of the right to food and other intersecting core international crimes in a number of conflict-specific contexts, including Yemen, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria, Ukraine and Palestine, with a view to advance accountability efforts. She has previously worked with UNICEF and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. Rebecca completed her Integrated Master of Arts in Law at Bocconi University and an LLM in Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam.
Frederik Obermaier
Frederik Obermaier is a book author and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Together with his colleague Bastian Obermayer he founded the Munich-based investigative newsroom paper trail media. In Germany, paper trail media is exclusively partnering with the magazine Der Spiegel and the public broadcaster ZDF. In Austria, paper trail media collaborates with Der Standard. Obermaier is one of the two reporters first contacted by the anonymous source of the Panama Papers, the leaked documents that prompted a global investigation involving hundreds of journalists. He also co-initiated the Paradise Papers-revelations and the Suisse Secrets-investigations. Frederik is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, board-member of Arab Reporter for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), co-founder of the Anti Corruption Data Collective and co-author with Bastian Obermayer of the international bestsellers Panama Papers – Breaking the story of how the rich and powerful hide their money (Oneworld Publications, 2017) and The Ibiza Affair - Inside views of a scandal (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2019). Together with Obermayer and the journalist Hannes Munzinger he co-authored the book Suisse Secrets - How bankers hid money from tax evaders, torture generals, dictators and the Catholic Church - with the help of politics (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2022).
Basile Simon
Basile Simon is Director of Special Projects at the Starling Lab for Data Integrity, Stanford University, an academic research lab innovating with the latest cryptographic methods and decentralized web protocols to meet the technical and ethical challenges of establishing trust in our most sensitive digital records.
Emily Tripp
Emily Tripp is executive director of Airwars.
Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo
Il Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo di Perugia è un evento annuale che riunisce professionisti dei media, esperti di comunicazione e appassionati di informazione da tutto il mondo. Si svolge nel centro storico di Perugia e offre conferenze, dibattiti, workshop e opportunità di networking sui temi più rilevanti del giornalismo contemporaneo.