Sarah Burke
The past few years has seen a resurgence of conflict worldwide – new wars have started while old, entrenched ones have been revived. Global balances of power and security are under more pressure than at any time since the Cold War.
Social media is now a thoroughly splintered and polarized space. Mis- and disinformation are spreading, and trustworthy, independent journalism is under-resourced and under attack. As the stakes keep rising, the information environment, on the whole, is getting more complex and hostile. Safety and security leaders are busier than ever, both meeting their organizations intensifying needs and analyzing the byzantine and knotty world of open source information.
“We derive great strength from our diversity,” says Ahmed Namatalla, who leads the Middle East and Africa team at Factal, a risk intelligence verification platform supported by a 24/7 team of experienced journalists and regional experts.
“We’ve covered our region on the ground. We speak its languages. We’re intimately familiar with its wars, political disputes and shifting alliances, environmental challenges, travel restrictions, media censorship. Even its sports teams.”
Factal is a platform-agnostic tool that combines advanced AI with seasoned journalists to help protect lives around the world. Members count on Factal for rapid, verified information when it matters most – from business travelers in Tel Aviv to hotel staff in Beirut to aid workers in Syria.
Factal editors draw on a vast range of open data to corroborate, verify and publish updates on early-stage events. A robust database helps them quickly validate local sources and avoid AI aggregators and impersonators. Editors are transparent about what they know – and what they don’t – while every step of the process follows a journalistic code of ethics that balances speed with accuracy.
For Namatalla, Factal’s far-reaching source base is the key to getting stories right.
“There’s never been a single platform that has proven reliable in covering the Middle East and North Africa region in an accurate, timely and in-depth manner,” says Namatalla. “We are immersed in a combination of multiple social media platforms, local media news tickers, blogs and television.”
In the Middle East, traditional social media platforms have uneven reach, while press freedoms can be severely restricted. For Namatalla, reliable sourcing depends on the country – or the conflict – in question. And it requires a great breadth of channels spanning social media platforms, messaging apps, local television, newspapers, civil society and government platforms.
“Telegram is extremely useful in covering some parts of the region, such as Iran and the Israeli and Palestinian territories. In recent years, we’ve seen more of the region’s news outlets, policy makers, militant groups and even eyewitness accounts increase their presence there.”
Despite the rise of messaging apps like Telegram or Whatsapp, Facebook remains a crucial channel.
“This dates back to the Arab Spring, which came to be known in some circles as the ‘Facebook revolution’” Namatalla explains. “Facebook is particularly useful for live coverage of kinetic events, which might be impossible to find elsewhere.”
News coverage in the MENA/Africa region relies a lot on NGOs, rights monitoring groups, trade associations and civil society groups which are often organized on Facebook. In some conflicts, particularly in civil wars like Syria and Sudan, an NGO will often be the first and most accurate source for an emerging incident. More than 300 humanitarian aid and disaster relief NGOs are Factal members – a free service for qualified members – and they frequently share life-safety information in Factal’s chat network.
“Some of these conflicts have dragged on for years, all the while eroding the local media landscape and political structures,” Namatalla said. “Even reporters on the ground in those areas rely on these NGOs to inform their work. Those groups are simply vital.”
It has been nearly two years since the October 7th Hamas attacks against Israel. The conflict has since become a humanitarian crisis and a relentless, brutal war in Gaza that has at times threatened to engulf the whole Middle East. To cover these developments day in and day out, there are hundreds of relevant sources – across multiple platforms – to know and follow.
“We’re always on the lookout for false or misleading reports, which are very common in our region because of the nature of its long-standing political and geographical disputes,” Namatalla said. “Some of our flags for filtering out bad information include the language and affiliation of the source. A good example of this was during the recent Israel-Iran war when we saw false reports being spread with no local corroboration by Farsi-language accounts describing events in Israel and Hebrew and/or Arabic-language accounts recounting events in Iran.”
The stakes keep getting higher, but the job of being accurate, fast, and fair remains pretty much the same.
“Verification rules don’t change much, even when the story does. We always seek out multiple sources and report only the minimum of what we can see or hear,” Namatalla says. “Our journalists have spent decades learning about our sources, their ownership, affiliations and editorial policies and slants. That helps us form a more complete picture.”
Factal gives companies the facts they need in real time to protect people, avoid disruptions and drive automation when the unexpected happens.
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