In praise of … Brown Moses

Editorial
Something of a contrast with Seymour Hersh.
' "Wisdom reekin' outa me ..." sings Frank Zappa in his song Brown Moses. That may be why Eliot Higgins chose the name for his blog where he charts the unreported news from parts of Syria where conflict is so brutal no journalist or aid worker would sensibly visit. With a background in finance and administration and speaking no Arabic, Mr Higgins was already monitoring YouTube and Twitter for videos and stills of the internal war before he was made redundant last October. Now, backed by a crowdsourced fund, he works full time from his home in Nottingham analysing images. He has taught himself how chemical weapons are made, how to use Google Earth so that he can pinpoint the exact place footage was filmed, and how to identify shells and find out where they come from. His work, including a project with the New York Times on arms smuggling, is widely respected. He's pushed back the frontier of citizen journalism.'