ProPublica has released a new interactive resource of more than 500 videos taken in Washington, DC on January 6, the day of the Capitol riots, offering an unfiltered look at the events of the day, sourced from Parler, the social network popular with Trump supporters, whose database of over a million videos was archived before the service was taken offline.
We’ve covered past attempts to organize these videos into easy-to-use online resources. see, like this interactive. Patr10tic map. But what’s remarkable about ProPublica’s site is the ease with which you can scroll through a timeline of videos and sort by general location: Around DC, Near Capitol, and Inside Capitol. You can start by watching videos of crowds attending President Trump’s incendiary speech at noon, before watching events turn violent in the course of the afternoon.
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It is an eye-opening resource that captures video of the violent actions of the mob, including the vandalism and threats against legislators. Since the videos are organized chronologically, you will often see the same scene captured from multiple angles, making it much easier to see what is really going on despite the chaos, ProPublica describes how it ended up with the more than 500 videos contained in the resource.
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He says he originally got the videos from an anonymous programmer who archived more than 1 million clips of Parler before he went offline. ProPublica then pulled out around 2,500 videos based on the time they were uploaded and their location data. From these, the staff selected over 500 videos that they believed were timely and relevant to the day’s events.
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Despite the number of videos included in the resource, ProPublica notes that there are some notable blind spots. For example, there is only one video in the Senate or House chambers, despite media material indicating that rioters were filming in the rooms.
An eye-opening look at the day’s events
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