By Anne Koch

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the world’s largest alliance of public service media, has opened its Ukraine Archive to external applicants.

This curated, searchable collection of some of the best journalism about the Russia-Ukraine war since the full-scale invasion of February 2022, is accessible on request to journalists, academics, human rights researchers, and others engaged in public interest work. 

The archive brings together more than 30,000 video and audio reports from EBU member journalists – from broadcasters like France Télévisions, Telewizja Polska, BBC, Suspilne Ukraine, and many others – and contains social media verified by the Eurovision Social Newswire team and from other media sources, such as AFP, all focusing on the biggest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War.  

The material in the Archive is searchable by the usual criteria like location and date, and additionally, each item is labelled with one or more tags documenting alleged human rights violations in armed conflict, specially devised for the project by human rights experts. 

These include abuses such as ‘Violence Against Person – Killing’, and ‘Infrastructure Damage – Bridge’, to name only two of the more than 100 tags we’re working with. This means researchers can search according to specific categories of human rights abuses in war and armed conflict, making their task easier and faster.

It’s been a rewarding experience witnessing the close collaboration by national broadcasters, crucial to the project’s success.

I’ve also been inspired by so many talented people inside and outside the EBU: The brilliant Eurovision News producers who curate and tag the items;  endlessly helpful and knowledgeable IT experts without whom I would be at a complete loss; the EBU News Committee and Eurovision News leadership, strong supporters of the project who had the original vision to create the Archive; legal advisors, policy staff, and many others.

I was also inspired by archivists in national broadcasters, including the incredible network of Suspilne archivists, some of them working in difficult conditions close to the frontline, and by archivists from other important archives around the world who advised me about issues like accessibility, ethical responsibilities and security.  

As I worked on the project, I increasingly came to realise that the Archive is of fundamental importance. Amid the confusion, bloodshed and destruction of war and armed conflict, journalists bear witness. They open the world’s eyes to atrocities. Their work is critical. When they are not present, there is less accountability. 

As human rights activist Nadia Murad, co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, put it:

‘For the victims of conflict, journalists are quite often their only hope, giving us voice. They collect evidence, a vital part of the documentation process, helping to hold the powerful to account and to make the world a safer place.’

War reporting is stressful and often very dangerous for the reporters, producers, camera operators, translators, fixers, citizen journalists armed only with a phone, and others. 

With the Archive, we have created an enduring resource, a ‘long tail’ for some of the best reporting in the world on the Russia-Ukraine War.

The work of brave journalists and others should be preserved for posterity and for future accountability.

At a time when disinformation is rife, we’re compiling and archiving accurate, independent and quality journalism that will help to create a factual and detailed narrative of the war, countering disinformation and propaganda. Truth is the first casualty of war, as the saying goes.  

The Archive is a rich source of material and of evidence, which will help to preserve the historical record for use by journalists, documentary makers, researchers and others to inform audiences around the world.

The Ukraine Archive is an immense work of collaboration – and a great example of how multiple media organisations can work together to create a sum that is bigger than its parts.

The unique, collaborative effort by the EBU to create an archive that will endure could become a model or at least provide inspiration for other journalistic conflict and war archives and have an impact on the wider journalism community.

It is also the case that this work might make a modest contribution to increasing public trust in media at a time when public media is under attack and journalism’s business model continues to be undermined.  

For now, because the Russia-Ukraine war continues, the reporting and archiving also go on.  

This post, by Anne Koch, Ukraine Archive Project Lead, European Broadcasting Union, UK was first published by the EBU.

Anne Koch is the Ukraine Archive Project Lead at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and based in London.

Previously she was the Program Director for the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN).

Before that, she had an award-winning career in broadcast journalism at the BBC, including Deputy Director of the English World Service, Executive Editor of the BBC’s flagship radio news and current affairs programs, Editor of the World Tonight and producer of more than a hundred radio documentaries.

She has also worked as Director for Europe and Central Asia at Transparency International (TI).