In December 2012, there were fragmentary reports from Syrian activists and citizens of small and medium-sized gas attacks. On December 23, government forces again attacked the rebel stronghold of Homs. Over several weeks, reports seeped out about the possible use of chemical weapons. Some seven were said to have died from “poisonous gas”; others suffered nausea, limp muscles, blurred vision or difficulty breathing. The attack highlighted a growing dilemma: without reporters on the ground, the Western media often had to rely either on video and testimony from Syrian sources, or report nothing at all.

Citizen reports . Many Western news organizations, even those with reporters on the scene, found themselves debating whether to use material provided from inside Syria by local journalists, citizens, rebels and the government. Such material posed obvious difficulties. Often it was hard to understand just what the video depicted. The dating was uncertain. Sometimes it was fake. Absurdly, sometimes both sides used the same footage to prove the atrocities of the other.

But citizen video could provide an invaluable inside picture of events that Western reporters could not cover. The New York Times , for example, in July 2012 launched “Watching Syria’s War,” a curated blog dedicated to publishing citizen video. Text explained to readers what the paper was able to verify about the video and what was unknown. ^[17]

By November 2012, the phenomenon of unreliable material had become so prevalent that Shelton wrote a piece about fake videos circulating in Syria. ^[18] For example, one video that purported to be a beheading by chainsaw in Syria actually came from Mexico and was shot five years earlier. Another showing a fearsome new rebel unit had been staged: the weapons they held were Chinese-made toy guns. News outlets, especially television networks desperate for images, were too often taken in. In May 2012, US networks had run video of “Syrian” soldiers beating protesters that proved to be four-year-old footage from Lebanon. After a May massacre, the BBC ran a photo provided by a Syrian activist that turned out to be a 2003 image from Iraq.

The rising tide of chemical attack reports only made it harder to decide how to treat material from inside Syria that did not come from a known individual. GlobalPost editors were grateful that Shelton was able to help determine what was credible. In general, says Middle East Editor Gelling, “we haven’t gotten into the business of publishing all these videos coming out of Syria, partly because we know so many of them are fake.”

Citizens do not submit videos to us. If there’s citizen video that we are considering using, it’s something we’ve found on social media. [But] we use them rarely, unless we can confirm it either through Tracey’s [Shelton] own knowledge or from some other source.

Meanwhile, the war intensified. On February 25, 2013 the government launched a major assault on Aleppo, the city where Shelton usually stayed. Over 140 people died. March 16 marked the second anniversary of the Syrian uprising. On March 19, there was an alleged chemical weapons attack at Khan al-Assal, west of Aleppo. President al-Assad and the rebels each blamed the other for the attack. But details were murky. As the New York Times blog put it: “We do not know for sure that either side used the weapons, and if they did, we do not know what they were.” ^[19] Another alleged chemical weapons attack took place the same day in al-Atebeh, a suburb of the capital, Damascus, killing 25 and injuring dozens. In addition, non-governmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the Syrian Observatory for Human Right reported liberal use of ballistic missiles and cluster bombs.

President al-Assad himself requested that the United Nations investigate the charges of a chemical weapons attack and, on March 21, 2013, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon announced that the UN, together with the World Health Organization and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, would look into it. President Obama, echoing his words of the previous August, told a press conference that “the use of chemical weapons is a game changer.” By mid-April, media reported that the governments of Israel, the US, France and Britain all claimed to have evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria. But they offered little hard evidence. As an April 24 New York Times editorial on the various reports observed, “[W]hile [al-Assad] may be capable of using weapons of mass destruction, there is no proof that he has done so.” ^[20]

Shelton wanted to get back into Syria to see what she could verify for herself. But in April, she flew to New York City to attend the April 11 award ceremony for the 2012 George Polk awards. She had won for video reporting. The citation mentioned her “compelling journalism that put a human face on the conflict in Syria.” ^[21] Under the rubric “Inside Syria,” GlobalPost had submitted a package of five 2012 videos Shelton shot in Aleppo, including her pieces on the hospital and the shell attack she narrowly survived. Middle East Editor Gelling attended the awards with her. The next day, she boarded a flight back to Turkey, enroute to Syria.