‘Most crimes are heard but not seen’: a not-to-be-missed webinar with Earshot
PICTURE: Daniel Reche/Pexels
Following a successful African Investigative Journalism Conference in October and November 2024 (#AIJC2024), the Wits Centre for Journalism is hosting a series of webinars in collaboration with the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM), a Conference partner.
The webinars are aimed at giving journalists across Africa the necessary tools to elevate their investigative work and hold power to account.
In the first session, on 10 December, the Centre welcomes Dr Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Founder and Director of Earshot, the world’s first not-for-profit organisation producing audio investigations for human rights and environmental advocacy.
He will be in conversation with #AIJC2024 convenor Beauregard Tromp, exploring how journalists can use technologies and techniques within forensic audio analysis to enhance their investigations.
Journalist-in-Residence at IFPIM Khadija Patel will give the opening remarks.
Using cutting-edge audio forensic analysis techniques, Earshot adds a crucial but often overlooked dimension to open-source investigations. While image and spatial analysis have become widespread over the last few years, until now half of the story has remained untold on the soundtrack.
In just one year of operation, Earshot has demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in its field. Its small team has worked on over 21 cases spanning regions from India to the United States, from Palestine to Afghanistan, from Paris to Portland, from Lebanon to Congo.
Their work has supported investigative journalism at the Washington Post, Sky News, Channel 4, le monde, AFP and Al Jazeera with whom their investigation into the killing of Hind Rajab and her family was cited in the US Senate.
Earshot’s audio evidence has played a key role in advocacy campaigns by leading human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem.
It explains on its website how ‘most crimes are heard but not seen’, and that ‘earwitnesses outnumber eyewitnesses’
However, ‘there is a lack of investigative tools specifically tailored to the experience of sound – how it propagates through space and how these auditory experiences are etched into memory’.
‘This has led to earwitness testimony being considered inferior to eyewitness accounts. [We] seek to redress this imbalance by developing carefully designed tools to unlock witnesses’ acoustic memories.
‘Our approach involves restoring memories of acoustic events in a controlled and safe manner by giving language to acoustic experiences that are often difficult to describe in words alone.
‘We use a combination of tones, white noise, convolutional reverberation, digital acoustic modelling and sound effects in conjunction with a verbal line of enquiry to elicit the vital information from people who have had only peripheral experiences of crimes’
Earshot says ‘these methods have proved particularly valuable in uncovering instances of illegal and inhumane incarceration and abduction, enabling us to extract crucial information from behind blindfolds or within echoing spaces concealed behind walls’.
‘These techniques have also been used to assess the sound of air strikes, helping to corroborate the origin of jets and drones heard over conflict zones.’
- The webinar is on 10 December from 2pm to 3pm (SAST), and is online via Zoom. Register here
