Robert Mackey

Robert Mackey is a journalist whose work has focused on the verification and analysis of visual evidence posted on social networks by witnesses to events since he live-blogged post-election protests in Iran in 2009, and the uprisings across the Arab world in 2011 for The New York Times.

As the editor and main writer of The Times breaking news blog, The Lede, from 2009-2014, Rob examined viral images to investigative unlawful violence against protesters — in Bahrain, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine and the United States.

He continued to focus on visual evidence in the news analysis column he wrote for The Times from 2014-2016, Open Source, and as a senior writer for The Intercept from 2016-2023.

Rob won a Mirror Award in 2022 for “Meet the Riot Squad,” a visual investigation of how right-wing influencers used deceptively edited, undercover video of Black Lives Matter protests to smear racial justice protesters.

Rob’s reporting for The Intercept also revealed that a Russian state television interview with a young survivor of a chemical attack in Syria was secretly conducted at a Syrian military facility, and that a secret Israeli military police report acknowledged that an armed Israeli drone killed four young boys on a beach in Gaza in 2014.