Rebecca Wexler

Rebecca Wexler is an independent documentary filmmaker, visiting fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project, and co-founder of the Yale Visual Law Project. She holds a bachelor’s in history of science from Harvard College and a master’s in philosophy in history of science and technology from Cambridge University, where she was a Gates Scholar. Wexler recently completed work as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Sri Lanka.

Journalist Security Blog | Sri Lanka

Integrity vs. authenticity in video journalism

By Rebecca Wexler/CPJ Guest Blogger

A still from the video showing a Sri Lankan soldier about to execute a prisoner. (AFP/Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka)

Back in November 2010, Britain's Channel 4 broadcast a leaked video that appears to show men in Sri Lankan military uniforms executing bound prisoners, the camera panning across a series of bodies laid out in a ditch. Family and friends identified one of those bodies as that of Tamil Tiger TV newscaster Shoba, also known as Isaipriya. If authenticated, the video could constitute evidence that Isaipriya was murdered. It would be one step toward accountability in a long string of unsolved murders of journalists in Sri Lanka. It would also be evidence of war crimes that are said to have been committed during the final phases of the 27-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE. But disputes have ensued between the United Nations, which claims the video is authentic, and the Sri Lankan government, which claims that it is fake.

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