April 2 is the International Day of Fact-Finding, which aims to remind us once again of the importance of facts.

Unlike investigative and other journalistic genres, the main principle of fact-checking is to work with open sources. However, in addition to checking news, with this toolkit, it is possible to conduct investigations, find connections, discover facts and so on.

On the occasion of the International Day of Fact-Finding, Media.am has decided to summarize the open-source investigations conducted by journalists investigating facts in Armenia over the past year, starting from April 2020.

“Armenians in Baku:”  Armenian websites were spreading suspicious video

On September 9, 2020, the websites of the Public Television and Radio and other platforms spread a “sensational video” of an Armenian man walking in Baku, greeting the Azerbaijani police and security officers.

Media.am studied the video and discovered a number of strange things. The source of the video is a suspicious YouTube page. There are traces of editing in it: It is possible that the video was shot separately, and the voice of the talking man was later added. Moreover, through the location, it was possible to find out that the video is not new: landscape design and satellite imagery helped us to understand this.

Satellite imagery helps to verify and investigate facts

Satellite imagery, which is available on both paid and free platforms, is part of an open-source investigation toolkit. They can be used to locate, find the trajectory of the change of place and make other discoveries. Here are two more examples of this:

1️⃣ The Green Hour Church in Shushi has been partially destroyed

On November 19, fip.am studied content being spread, by locating and finding out that the Green Hour Church in Shushi had been partially destroyed. The damage was evident in a satellite image published months later.

2️⃣ Ganja airport did not disappear

On October 4, Artsakh President’s spokesman Vahram Poghosyan announced the “disappearance” of Ganja Airport, the second-largest city in Azerbaijan. Then photos were being spread online “proving” it, but in reality, they had nothing to do with the event. The satellite image months later proved that the airport was standing.

Azerbaijan has used banned white phosphorus against Artsakh

Open sources help in the collection of information, coordination and contrast for investigations.

At the end of October 2020, the Armenian side announced that Azerbaijan had used weapons containing elements of chemical weapons (white phosphorus), prohibited by international conventions. A video was published. However, it has not yet been proven whether the substance used was white phosphorus or not.

The “fact-finding platform,” gathering the available facts and visual materials, proved that what was used was really white phosphorus. For this, the platform first found out the peculiarities of burning phosphorous weapons, then studied the burning of smoke seen in the videos. It turned out that they have three main features that distinguish the burning of phosphorous weapons: heavy white smoke, bright yellow to white fire, and blast burning.

The opinion was proved by the videos provided by “Bars Media” company shooting in Artsakh during the war. The site compared the available materials with videos of the approved use of phosphorous weapons in other countries. The similarity was obvious.

How did Turkey and Azerbaijan transfer mercenaries from Syria to the South Caucasus?

Numerous testimonies and visual evidence obtained by journalists and researchers were combined and compared by media.am. As a result, the route taken by the mercenaries to reach the South Caucasus was reconstructed.

Days after the start of the Artsakh war, Armenia, France, Russia and Iran announced that mercenaries had been transferred from Syria to the South Caucasus. This news was covered by the leading international media. Meanwhile, Ankara and Baku have repeatedly and categorically denied this news.

VETO’s Narek Malyan is behind Mediaport

Open-source investigations can also reveal connections.

From the days of the war, the Telegram channels, the content of which is spread by the media in the same way, gathered a large audience. One such source of information is the channel Mediaport, which was created immediately after the end of the war on November 11, 2020.

The “Fact-Finding Platform” studied the content of the channel, compared it with other sources, as a result of which it had serious grounds to claim that it has a direct connection with the far-right conservative “VETO” movement, its founder, former police chief Vladimir Gasparyan Narek Malyan.

The content disseminated by Mediaport matched the content disseminated by VETO in terms of location and time. The site created a whole map of such coincidences.

Events covered by both Mediaport and Veto, fip.am

Much of the content spread by Mediaport is news, anonymous sources, misinformation, out-of-context, gossip-level information. And this content, as this investigation has found out, is often spread by the opposition and the media connected with the opposition forces.

The fake factory turned out to be fake news

The same Mediaport channel spread the news of the VETO members affiliated with it “discovering” a fake factory working for the government as a fake farm cursing at people online. Days after the end of the war, a group of citizens videotaped how they entered a “fake factory,” recorded the faces of the employees, asked questions and embarrassed them.

The authors of the videos, which collected tens of thousands of views, actually entered not the “fake factory” but the office of “Ingo Armenia” insurance company. This was proven by the location of the video and the combination of the data contained in it.

Some of the private houses presented in the video are definitely in Artsakh

There was another opportunity for discovering the location in March of this year. The mushroom website Amnew.site shared a video in which luxurious private houses built in Stepanakert were seen. Mediaport Telegram channel claimed that the “published house” is located in Los Angeles. In fact, the channel checked only the main picture of the publication, which is not available in the video and is really not found in either Armenia or Artsakh. Infocom studied the published video, located and found out the specific location of some houses in Artsakh.

Pictures of Armenian Su-30SM show missiles, which, according to Pashinyan, Armenia did not manage to buy

At the end of March, photos of Armenian Su-30SMs with guided air-to-air missiles hovering under the fighter wing appeared on the Internet. Earlier, Prime Minister Pashinyan had said that before the war they had not managed to buy missiles for Su-30SM, that is why they did not enter the battle.

Media.am studied the photos, located them and found out that they were taken at Gyumri “Shirak” airport, at least after June 2020.

Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton: Ruzanna Khachatryan’s wardrobe

Open-source investigations can also be done by examining the social media activity of officials and their families.

On the day of the regular court hearings in the March 1 case, Ruzanna Khachatryan, the wife of former Minister of Defense Seyran Ohanyan, the defendant in this case, wore a jacket from the 2018 collection of the Italian Moncler brand, the price of which is $2,275. Seyran Ohanyan is no longer a state official, but for many years his income, according to the declarations, was the salary and pension of a civil servant, and his wife’s income was only her salary.

Based on the photos that Ruzanna Khachatryan posted on her Facebook page, Media.am found out that during Ohanyan’s tenure, his wife and children often wore luxury brand clothes and items, some of which can cost several thousand dollars. Ruzanna Khachatryan also published the pictures in luxurious clothes after her husband’s dismissal.

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The International Fact-Finding Day event is coordinated by the Poynter Institute International Fact-Checking Network. The factcheckingday.com website has been created for this day, where you can find educational facts about fact-checking, as well as try your hand at interactive tests.

Arshaluys Barseghyan