Crowdsourcing Reporting of the Iraq War
Last week in the UK, the Chilcot Report delivered a devastating critique of Tony Blair and his government’s handling of the war in Iraq. It said that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was overstated and the plans for the aftermath were “wholly inadequate”.
The report was the culmination of a 7-year investigation and is some 2.6 million words in length. That‘s a lot of detail to pore over. So much so that the Guardian newspaper has turned to the crowd to help it find information that has yet to come to light.
When the report was published on July 6 2016 news bulletins and newspapers initially relied on the report’s executive summary and a public statement by Sir John Chilcot, who chaired the investigation.
Although some of the Guardian’s top journalists were combing through the findings, the paper asked its readers and anyone else who may be interested to get through as much of it as they can, and to highlight facts the paper may have missed.
Mammoth Task
In all, there are 12 volumes, making it four-and-a-half times as long as Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’. The report was published online and readers were given pointers as to some of the things the Guardian is interested in. Specifically, information relating to six questions the paper says the report must answer. For example:
- What did Blair promise Bush?
- Did the invasion increase the risk of terrorist attacks in Britain?
- Was the invasion unlawful?
If readers find anything of note, they fill in and submit an online form.
To read the Chilcot Report, click here.
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