experience
Since the mid nineties I have known Gavin MacFaydyen, because I closely collaborated with his wife, Susan Benn. Therefore I had the privilege to spend breakfasts, lunches and dinners and enjoy his
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Caroline
Having a professional career in investigative journalism for over 30 years, MacFaydyen states that technology deeply affects the way investigative journalists work. What used to take two weeks of
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Given current technology the Internet facilitates millions of bloggers offering stories that could be used as witness accounts. However, states MacFadyen, one has to know whether a particular blogger
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Nation states now control much more than they did before. In the last century the state could not, in a large measure, control one’s ability to go places to the degree to which they do it now.
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Where a judge has to evaluate evidence, an investigative journalist also has to assemble and convey evidence. Next to this, the gravity of the question has to be addressed. The gravity is either
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In addition to being a producer of investigative documentaries MacFaydyen is also director of fiction films. He emphasizes the importance of making a clear distinction between them.
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For MacFaydyen a good witness is critical to investigating or reporting. A good witness is someone who bears a truthful account of something they witnessed, something they saw, and can describe it
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How to meet a witness, depends on what the witness is witness to. If it's to the destruction of their own family, or the murder of all their closest friends, you approach the witness very differently
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For MacFadyen the process between being witness and bearing witness is defined by gathering other people and other sources, which will confirm his story as well.
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When meeting a witness for the first time, the investigative journalist first has to assess the trustworthiness of the witness. The journalist may know the history and therefore may be able to judge
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When watching documentaries or the news on television, people can only sense the truth through the filter of their own experience, argues MacFadyen. Also he himself uses his experience as a tool for
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