As the Head of Social Newsgathering at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in Geneva, Switzerland, Derek Bowler is an accomplished digital verification journalist and OSINT investigations specialist. With a BA (Hons) degree in Journalism and New Media from the University of Limerick, he started his career at Storyful, where he was promoted to senior journalist and news projects lead, working on investigations and projects with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Google News Labs.
In 2014, Bowler co-produced the mini-documentary One Month In Ferguson - The Death of Michael Brown with The Young Turks, using eyewitness media to uncover the events leading to Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri. His 2016 investigation and subsequent documentary, GLITCH: Irish Media's Unethical Use of User-Generated Content, into the use of eyewitness material by Irish news organisations uncovered widespread unethical practices and copyright infringements by several media companies.
Joining the EBU, he founded the Eurovision Social Newswire, providing verified and cleared-for-use eyewitness media content emerging on social media. He also co-authored the EBU Eyewitness Principles and Guidelines, helping to establish ethical standards for news verification.
Bowler's Agile Newsroom event, which creates a working newsroom environment for journalists to learn and apply visual verification skills in real-time, was recognized by the Council of Europe's Supporting Quality Journalism through Media and Information Literacy Study as a promising practice among Media and Information Literacy (MIL) training models in 2020.
In 2023, Bowler was part of the EBU Investigative Journalism team that uncovered evidence of war crimes by Russia as part of the investigation into the missing children of Ukraine. He has consulted on verification and fact-checking best practices with the European Commission and European Parliament and volunteers as a fact-checking accessor with the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) and the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN).
