You're listening to a stage talk titled protecting the people within your research. This week we were joined by the Fuller Projects editor -in -chief Eliza Inyangwe. Eliza provided invaluable tips for speaking to potential sources and ways to ensure your reporting does more good than harm. Join us as we discuss the people at the centre of your story and the editorial decisions.
that should be taken to protect them. This talk was hosted by me, Charlotte Mar, on Thursday the 22nd of May 2025 in the Bellingcat Discord server. Welcome to this week's stage talk. I'm fascinated by today's topic. It's something that I hold quite dear to my heart. Building on the wonderful talk by Dr. Alexa Konig, and if you haven't listened to that, please check out our RSS feed where you can find all of our stage talks, previous ones including the one by Dr.
Alexa Konig. We wanted to revisit the issue of consent when it comes to reporting on sensitive subjects like gender -based violence. Today, we're joined by the Fuller Project's editor -in -chief, Eliza and Yang Wei. The Fuller Project is a newsroom dedicated to reporting on issues that affect women with a mission of enacting positive change for women and I will drop the link to the reporting in a second in the chat.
It is a unique setup to have a newsroom with such a sole focus and within this sole focus the team work on an array of topics from labour rights to health to climate change. Eliza is not here today to look at a singular topic, Carla. She's here in her editorial role capacity to give an insight into how her team has garnered a reputation of trust and transparency when it
comes to sharing individual stories. We're going to explore what preserving the dignity of those featured in your reporting looks like, both in a traditional journalism sense and when it comes to open source research, which many of you in this room practice. What questions should you be asking yourself when you're looking to engage with testimonies or coming to publish a story on a sensitive subject? Hopefully we'll be covering
that today. Before I pass on to Eliza, a little reminder that while we'll be taking questions in the chat, which you can find on the top right -hand side of your screen, it's important to note this is being audio recorded. So if you do not want me to mention your name when I bring up your question in the discussion, please note that within your question. All right, okay Eliza the floor is yours and we'll come back in a little bit for Q &A. Hey, hi, Charlie. Hi, everyone.
Nice to meet you all and to be invited into your community for this conversation. I'm hoping very much to make it a conversation. So I will talk for as little time as I can so that perhaps in the Q &A and in the conversation with you, I might not just share more details, but also learn from all of you as well, because part of the reason I was very excited to do this is I'm so admiring of the work of OSINT investigators, obviously in journalism spaces for the last several
years. The sense that we can hold power to account in different ways. We can reveal truths that have been obscured by getting granular and piecing together big data or other forms of open source information has been something that I have really admired. And so it is a real privilege also for me to learn from this community as well as to share from my own experiences to it. In the introduction, I will just tell you a little bit more about
myself. This is very much part of my journey to doing this work and has helped inform some of the perspectives that I have developed over the years. and in working with other folks. I didn't actually study journalism. I was born in Cameroon. I won't give you the whole bio. I'm sure that information is all online. So you can find that pretty easily. But grew up in a context where a lot of the reporting on whether it's Cameroon or any part of Africa is around
sort of like patriarchy. And women are usually presented as victims in stories and never have any agency. And so when I eventually started working in journalism, my first role was at The Guardian where I was for many years. I got really fed up of seeing women from the African continent reflected in a very sort of two -dimensional way and tried to set up my own platform focusing
on African women's stories. And I've spent the entirety of my career, I think, really just kind of like nerdishly obsessing around two things, trying to broaden what we consider a story, the types of subjects that are worth reporting on, interesting for audiences, as well as trying to change who we think of as storytellers, who gets to tell the story who gets to determine
what the narrative is. And that is the work that I've continued at the Fuller project, which I joined in January, I run their newsroom from Amsterdam, where I moved to be managing editor of a member funded journalism platform called The Correspondent. And so I've worked for a range of different news organizations, including the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, where I had a very funky role called community organizer, which is not usual in newsrooms, right, to have
community organizers. And I think at the at the heart of my career is always about thinking about the relationship of people to the media. And I think, of course, being a product of coming into the newsroom at the height of sort of... social platforms and thinking about how they could really rethink our relationships with subjects in our stories has been very much something that I've explored in our work. The Fuller Project itself is 10 years old, started off first by
focusing on the missing voices in conflict. So it was often the voices of women. And every time I say women, I mean that expansively. So women, genderqueer folks, gender diverse communities, and has also then broadened its journalism. to think about the under -reported stories, whether it's in conflict situations or other contexts. So we know that only 0 .02 % of mainstream international reporting focuses on issues that disproportionately affect women. And so the Fuller Project exists
to try and bridge that gap in coverage. We also know that a lot of audiences, particularly young people and people who identify as women, are less interested in the traditional subjects that journalism and journalists have been obsessed with. And so again, it's trying to sort of serve those audiences also. I have worked on investigations and stories that I've had to do with, you know, that had required mining sex worker data. We did a very sensitive investigation at the Guardian,
sorry, at CNN. I've just noticed that the video component of that is up for an Emmy. I'm no longer there, so if we win, there will be no statuette in my house. But it was an investigation on sexual violence against Rohingya hydras, and hydras are a gender minority in that region. of South
Asia. We've looked at the experiences of children as they're being sort of exploited online, as well as Last year, I believe I did an investigation with a reporter in India following an Afghan family that fled Afghanistan and crossed illegally
into Pakistan. And the reason I named these examples is that they're all examples of sensitive where there's either sensitive data, underage characters, people who if their stories were to come to light, as much as we want to hear them so that we can empathize with their experience, it can put them
in greater danger. We spent a long time thinking and talking about how we presented the story of the Afghan sisters who fled with their little brother and what the repercussions would be, not just for them as they were undocumented in Pakistan, but also for other people who might be using the same essentially illegal or informal migratory routes and whether the Taliban might take retaliatory action to then close down those
routes following their departure. involved at some point, multiple phone calls with the US State Department. But that is a story over a beer and not for now. So those are the kinds
of ranges of things that we've worked on. And in preparing for this call, thinking about how to protect the people in your investigation, I thought it might be useful to sort of establish, and forgive me if I'm starting with the basics, but not knowing who is in the room, I think it might just be useful to establish an answer. Why is it important to protect people? I think
a lot of us get into this work. because we are either social justice minded like think that, you know, systems and processes are really unfair and want to expose them. We want to see things change or we might be interested in the technology, the approach, you know, less about the people, less even about the systems change and just more about how far can I go using this tool or this
approach? But I think it is also important to remember that I think the difference to my mind between journalism and academic research is that we don't, journalists don't see ourselves as just providing information, we tell stories. And the difference is that stories are meant to connect emotionally with people and human beings connect with the experience. of other human beings more than they connect with data
or information, right? It's really hard to conceptualize how many people have died in an explosion and much more impactful when you hear the experience of one person whose life was lost in that explosion to think about the sort of relative harm. And we sort of have this great capacity for empathy to then multiply that across the large numbers and don't so much register emotionally when we
just hear the large numbers. And so it's. Often important to think about, well, it's important to think about why to protect the people in your research and your investigations because often doing so is a matter of life and death for them. That might not be immediately apparent. They might not be currently in a situation where their lives are at risk, but we never can fully think about the repercussions and the retribution that
might come for exposing and revealing harm. As I mentioned with the Afghan story, example that I gave. It's often also the case that if we're speaking truth to power, power has power that it can use against people and oftentimes depending on where we ourselves are situated, if that harm or that power might not be exercised against us, but against the people who have worked with
us to help report the story. And so thinking about it in a sort of networked way, not just about me as the storyteller, me as the investigator and the reporter, but who had any touch points with this reporting and might be a bit more vulnerable in terms of their nationality, in terms of their gender, in terms of lots of different identifiers and the ways in which the ways in which we show up means that we are exposed to different types
of harms. Right. So we're not all. share the same sort of privilege of safety in all different spaces that we might be in. Mental trauma is often as bad as physical trauma. And so oftentimes when we've collected the data that we may have, and we then need a character and we're thinking, okay, I just need someone to tell me their story, asking them to rehash their lived experiences is probably going to be and or can be re -traumatizing
for them. And it is a question not just on whether if or how we ask, if we ask rather, but how we
ask them to do so. It's often about also thinking in sort of a trauma -informed way, which is that people who have experienced trauma are not going to give you a sort of blow -by -blow sequential event, sequential retelling of the events of their lives, and oftentimes it does mean that we have to go back multiple times or that In the work of journalism or journalistic investigation and research, having to sort of what I would say, bring the receipts right when someone tells
you a story, we both have to assume that people are trustworthy because that. making that assumption builds trust with them, but at the same time, we have to prod because we need to substantiate anything that they've said, right? And so there is a way in which we can do this that can either break trust or build it, that can re -traumatize people. that can actually cause further harm to them aside from the harm that they initially
experienced. And that every journalist or investigator is representing not just themselves, but the wider industry. And oftentimes you might not be thinking about this, but if you're in marginalized communities, really anywhere in the world, right?
I lived in London, if you are in... Migrant communities in central London, they have a distrust of the media as much as folks who live in Liverpool, where I went to university, because of how someone some time ago went about doing their reporting, went around doing their journalism, and that breaks trust that is often very, very difficult
to repair. And so when folks parachute into a community, get the quotes that they need, leave and report it, when any of our work is seen as extractive, it might not harm us directly, but it definitely impacts on the capacity of other researchers and other journalists and investigators that come after us to be able to work with that same community. And the fact is... that especially if you're looking at systemic issues, we might want to revisit a community over and over again,
right? We might want to speak to people who have been harmed, maybe not the same characters. If you're doing work on sort of like sexual, I don't know. grooming gangs, for example, the chances are that if that is place -based, you might be coming back to a same community over and over, and that lots of journalists may have walked that path before you. And so the ways in which we treat people, establish trust, protect them is going to be impactful beyond your reporting.
And so that's kind of just the setting of the scene. So then, well, what do we now do? How can you approach this work? And there are lots of approaches, lots of information online. But from my own experience, there are a few things that we have done that have worked. The first is, and none of these are in order, so not necessarily
approaching them sequentially. try to build in time, particularly I would imagine that folks who are in the OSINT community are like folks in the slow journalism community or investigative reporting in other ways, which basically means we have got more time. We've got much more time than folks who are working on breaking news,
sort of just chasing stories down. And so to be honest, as an editor, I often think that we have fewer excuses to not build in some of these sort of like care practices into our work because often our work is very laborious and takes time. It takes time to go from hunch to, you know, reporting, co -publishing, whatever our approach
is. And so really, what was our excuse to not build into that time some steps to make sure that the people we're working with, the people we're reporting on feel safe, trust us, are involved. Um, so when I think about listening, I often think about that because, um, we tend to have a very hierarchical view of expertise, right?
So it's often people who have, um, degrees of some sort to have researched a subject that we consider experts and that the people who tell us our stories oftentimes let's talk about whether it's, you know, gender -based violence or just victims. I would like to argue, and I'm not the first to do so, that experiencing gender -based violence makes you an expert in lots of things that have to do with gender -based violence.
And so considering those people, considering experience as a form of expertise, the two are not equivalent, but it is a form of expertise. So it changes how you think about your characters and the people who talk to you. They're just not there solely for the color, right? They're not just there solely for the kind of like, bringing to life the data, bringing to life the information that you have, they might be able to inform your reporting in many more ways if given the opportunity
to do so. And so that's why one of my thoughts is actually, if ambitious, if you have a newsroom or an editor or a time to do so, are there ways in which you can imagine collaborating with people you are reporting on so that they're not just characters in your story but actually might share a byline with you because actually they're much more invested in the reporting. I think this is going to open up some questions for folks about sort of objectivity and wonky word positionality,
perhaps. But actually, there are many instances where that has been done, where people have gone into prisons and have made incarcerated people and co -reporters and stories, perhaps, you know, from one investigation to the next, it might not work, but it's definitely something to think
about. And again, you have time. Ask people on a very sort of small but important point, ask people how they self identify, whether that is survivor or victim, whether that is you're doing reporting on something to do with the LGBT community. We find in our work, particularly if it is you try and report on issues that are globalized, that the language in one community is not the
same as the other. I can't remember what country, but I remember we did reporting on trans people somewhere in Latin America, and the word they used just wouldn't be the word we would use in the West and in English at the moment. I think it was transvestite or may have translated as that, which might seem very dated, but that was the word used in that community. And so I think in terms of making people feel safe and in terms of making sure that you represent them in the
ways that they see themselves. It's also about asking them what language they use, right? And if you then need to do the work as, you know, this is going from research to reporting now when you're then presenting it to audiences. If your audience are not in the community that you reported on, it's about providing that extra detail and saying, hey, this person chose to refer to them as this. Right. So don't come at
me. Yes, I know that we like to think of people as survivors, but actually this character, this person very much sees themselves as a victim. Right. And they and it's about honoring that and then explaining why you have chosen to use that language. If you're reporting, for example, on racialized issues and you're reporting in South Africa, there is a category of people who are who self identify as colored. If you're in America, that language will get you punched in
the streets. However, it's about reflecting on the language of the people who you're reporting on and not necessarily of the audience you're reporting to and then acting as a bridge builder to kind of then explain the context. Explain the extent of visibility. So when you are at the stage where you are now talking to people about an investigation and you want them to consent to be in your reporting, Is it already going
to be placed somewhere? And do they have the full understanding of the reach of that work? Particularly when we are dealing with people who might not consume the media we consume, do not take it for granted that they understand how long their information is going to last to live online, right, in perpetuity, or how what the reach of that reporting is going to be and how it might come back at them. If you are collaborating with multiple newsrooms and their story is going
to be translated, into multiple languages. Do they understand this? Do they understand that it is going to be reported beyond their local context? Sometimes maybe in it, right? Sometimes someone might feel comfortable to talk to you because you represent foreign media. But actually, if you're like, we have a local co -publishing partner or want to disseminate that journalism locally. Do they know that that is going to be
the case? So really asking people to fully consent, to be sure that they understand what they're participating in, and also providing them with multiple opportunities to change their minds. It makes me nervous to say even now because there have been many times when in many of the examples that I set out at the start of this talk, we have provided people, you know, you've got a story, you think it can be really impactful,
it can shift the dial in some way. And the last thing, there's a sort of knot in my stomach when I think, oh, we have to go back to this person and find out if they're still okay with us reporting their story because it's often been many months since we started on this journey. Do they still want to talk to us? Do they still want their story? to go out there. And there is always the
risk that they won't. But actually, if we're trying to live our values and to do journalism differently to how it's been traditionally done, we just have to take that risk. And it has indeed happened that at the 11th hour, somebody decides, actually, I don't wish to be part of this anymore. I don't want to be involved in your reporting, and we have to take them out. On the instances where we make people or invite people to be collaborators with us, really thinking about the distribution
of power, right? So that that is not just symbolic. but that actually they have some kind of say is really important. It is very exceptional. It's unusual, not the practice traditionally in journalism that we would give somebody our reporting to read once it's been done. And so it's not like we go back to folks with the entire story, but we often take back to them. their quotes, snippets of text or the audio to make
sure that they feel comfortable. If it is accompanied by video to make sure that they feel comfortable with how they are seen, particularly if it is sensitive, particularly if they run a risk of being revealed in ways that we haven't thought about. Again, thinking about identifying features. It is not enough, and I'm sure this is things
you all know, to retract names. There are other identifying characteristics of folks, particularly in tight -knit communities, that you have to think about in order to protect the people in your investigation. And then finally, check when it's safe to publish. Oftentimes, a big investigation doesn't need a news hook, right? Because you're not trying to ride the news wave, you're trying to make the news yourself. So you set your own
timelines. But oftentimes there might be a reason to go at a specific moment, not another, right? We did, while I was still at CNN, an investigation into how pro -democracy actors in Myanmar were being doxed and trolled on Telegram. That required a lot of data research to sort of go through and to identify that It was gendered because the ways in which women in that culture were being targeted for being pro -democracy was very different to how men were being targeted. It
was often sexualized. It often involved trying to present them as promiscuous because of the social and cultural meaning of that and not directly related to the politics in any way. And so we did this big investigation on it. And we looped in the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar to try
and increase the impact. of our investigation and they wanted to put out a letter and so you start to feel pressure for when to publish but it is often important that you should go back to the people who have been the sort of bedrock of your reporting to ask if it is safe for them
for the story to come out now. Another example I will give is when we were doing reporting on I think it was in Slovenia and it was how sort of power, I think it was the former president and other powerful political forces were trying to build movements online to dox specific people, particularly women, and how they were responding
to that. And because that the main character continues to live in the country that we're reporting on, because the man who is being accused of harm and mobilizing other to cause harm was still very powerful. I don't remember if he had already
lost his... the presidency at that point. But it was very important that we thought very carefully about when we release that reporting so that she could get to safety, so that she could make sure that she deleted her social apps so that she didn't expose herself to the vitriol that
might come online. And then for her to re -emerge when she felt safe and really just being diligent about, you know, the needs of the characters in your story and how to ensure that the people who give you so much that makes your journalism is are able to feel sort of taken care of through to the end. Okay, that's my sort of introductory presentation, and I'm very happy to take questions
from any of you. Thanks, Eliza, so much. I mean, you're speaking from your own personal experience and best practices in your newsroom, but what you're saying resonates with my experience completely at various newsrooms as well, doing investigative journalism. I can see some questions already coming in. someone's just put this is absolutely fascinating information. So I think a lot of people are enjoying your tips and tricks. Thank you. I want to say that person is not a relative
of mine. I also wanted to note that obviously, when it comes to Bellingcat, we often don't interview sources. We often don't actually have voices like the Fuller Project has in their pieces. They're not central to our work. That doesn't mean that we aren't thinking about the human
element in our investigations as well. For example, and this is a bit more of a different kind of example, when you're looking at if you're monitoring a particular far right account, for example, and you've found out who this prolific far for right activist is, and you're willing to possibly reveal a little bit about about their name and identity, you also have to think about all the other people around them. For example, though, they might have a wife, a girlfriend, family
members. So even when you're thinking about the human element in your story, it's not always, you know, there's victim or survivor in the central, central part of your story. It's also about the humans that are linked to whatever you are researching, whether it's the humans behind the big data that you've collected, or the people related directly to the subject matter that you're talking about. So I think it's really important that everyone also thinks about it in these contexts when we're
talking about it as well. Going back though to the survivor kind of testimony and speaking to those with lived experience, I wonder if anyone in the audience has specific examples of when they've tried to cover something human -centric and have struggled to find someone to speak to. I'd love to hear your experiences in that. Eliza, what are your first points of contact when you're looking for a source for a story of any topic?
Yeah, that's a good question. I also just want to chime in to what you just said, which was which is really important. And to also think about this phrase, right, duty of care. It's really, really difficult. And I don't think this is a fixed static and immutable perspective. How do we understand our duty of care as investigators, researchers, journalists? And when does it start and stop? And who do we extend it to, right?
To your point about if you expose someone in the far right, that person we can identify as a malicious actor, what about the people around them? My answer to that, because it can be so murky, is to remain is to acknowledge it and to have conversations about it, particularly if you're going from sort of like data research and investigation through to the reporting stage.
Really be open and if your editor doesn't start the conversation, I think you should start the conversation with them because we don't know
sometimes where to draw that line, right? And what you said just made me think of this and that there is no hard and fast rule every time, but I think we should always kind of be prepared when you are trying to reveal harm and when there are people at the center of your journalism in whatever capacity to actually ask about and think about the duty of care, particularly if you're
the kind of one leading the work. The final thing I'll say also related to that is I didn't speak at all to you know, the subject of this conversation is protecting the people in your investigation. Those are also other researchers, other investigators and other journalists, right? When the people on my team who had to sort of troll through, I'm sorry for my French, the shit that was. in telegram groups. When we have looked at material that's being used to dox women or other types
of violence, we also have to be mindful. Myself as an editor, I have to think about what the cost is to the people on my team for doing so, right? Much in the same way as content moderators might be exposed to harm. And so it's trying to think about our duty of care even to other people who we're working with and reporting on. So to your question then about how do we identify characters, if you have started with listening, we are now at the Fuller Project. trying to scope
out a series around AI and gendered work. We know that we live in societies where women's work is different to men's work, though we know, of course, that women were the early computer programmers because that was seen as mind -numbing calculations. And once computer programming and data work became sexy, it became men's work and not women's anymore. Somebody said to me yesterday that women were the original computers because they were manually doing the sort of computing
themselves. And now they're being replaced by computers. But I digress. We're doing the series and we're starting by organizing what we call listening circles, where we bring together people with lived experience as well as sort of more academic expertise or other forms of knowledge to basically try and ask the questions around what should we be reporting, what's interesting and what's not. That often reveals to us communities of people. So somebody might suggest a really
strong idea. Hey, there is a community of garment workers in Bangladesh who are doing X, Y, Z, and that is a way in. Other times, And in fact, often, reporters on my team, one of the kind of prized characteristics of the people I hire is how close are they to the ground in terms of having their ear to the ground, right? How many groups do they sort of belong to and discussions do they follow? It's really, really hard to reverse engineer. community belonging, right? Like you
have no contact with a group of people. And then once the story is out, then you try and immerse yourself. And that doesn't mean necessarily in a very sort of rudimentary way. You can only report on communities you belong to, but rather that if you're interested in a subject, you are more likely to know where to find characters who will speak to you if you've been following
it over time. Right. And so. If you are in, I don't know, Facebook groups or other groups where people are discussing an issue, Discord channels where people are discussing a subject, you're more likely to know the people who are impacted by that issue as a way of trying to then find characters. There is a lot of what we would call background research and calls that you make to
just try and find your character. We knew from data that... in Afghanistan, the number of women who were leaving through irregular and informal migratory routes almost peaked, almost surpassed, rather, the number of men for the first time in a very long time, I think in at least 20 plus years, which was very unusual, right, made even more challenging by the fact that the Taliban has banned women from traveling on their own.
So we knew from the data that women were in large numbers trying to leave Afghanistan through informal routes. But to be able to tell a story, we needed to find a way in that involved human beings. And actually, the capacity to be flexible about how you think about who your characters can be. So sticking with that example. Of course, the first thing we were looking for were women who themselves have traveled on this path. But because they're informal, because it's undocumented,
they're not exactly announcing themselves. And you cannot present yourself as a journalist on that border looking for people to speak to. And so one of the things that we did was we went to the people who collected the research, the IOM, the Institute of Migration, and other organizations that were trying to service and work with migrants to basically build relationships with them to find out if they would broker access for us to anyone. And that's often the ways in which we
get access, right? Brokered relationships. You find someone who is a gatekeeper of some or in some way, whether they are a nonprofit organization, a charity, a membership group and you ask that organization to broker access for you to the people who belong to that group. Having that gatekeeper as a trusted bridge into that community helps. But the other way that we looked at it was that actually if we weren't going to be able to get women themselves who had made that journey.
could we tell the story through the lens of the people who are at the borders, counting the undocumented or trying to do these surveys, right? Using their experience of reporting from the borders because, or documenting experiences at the border, because often there would be local hires from within that community and that there was. a capacity for there to be an interesting story there and a way into what the data was showing us but not
in the most sort of linear idea. Now that was not possible also because there were political risks for them to speak to us in that way and so we went back to the first approach and kept working at it until an Afghan support organization in Pakistan put us in touch with the three people who then became our main characters. Yeah, as I said in the chat, charities and stacked organizations are your friends. They are often the protocol, but it's important also not to cold email them
as well. You've got to give a clear reasoning as to why you are getting in touch, what purpose them brokering that relationship will give you both. And I think it's important not to see that as an extractive. relationship as well, which it can be in times in the journalism world particularly. And we've got quite a few questions coming through now, so I want to make sure that we have time for them. So I'll kick off with Sarah who asked a specific question about something that they've
struggled with in the past. When evaluating the risk to the person you're interviewing slash going to publish about, I have a question about how to understand the possible repercussions they will face specific to their community. How do you learn about the culture they come from and the feelings of their community regarding
survivors of sexual violence? Of course, asking them is important and they are the expert in their own life, but I want to do my own due diligence to make sure I'm reporting as best as possible. So what would you say to that kind of situation? Yeah. The first thing I would say is there is a fine line we walk between doing due diligence and being paternalistic, right? Which is not at all what I'm suggesting, but I think it's important to check ourselves as to how we do
that. So to speak a bit more to that, it's about sort of when you've done your research and when you've asked the person and then you still conclude, hmm, I think it's, you know, actually this isn't
best for you, right? And we have to often have conversations on my team about sort of making sure that people maintain their sense of agency because people who are often have suffered harm or are oppressed in some way, their story is the last sort of bastion of power that they have and wanting to tell that story is about sort of reclaiming some kind of power and exercising
that power. And so. Also worth saying, I guess, to your question, Sarah, that it's important to just kind of think, OK, once I have done some research and asked them. Even if I'm uncomfortable with the risk, that's when we then do all the other steps that we've talked about, right? Consult them when we're trying to publish, send them snippets of the reporting to make sure that they are happy with how they're presented, ask them how they wish to identify all of these things.
So then to your question itself, I think this is really the value in particularly if you are investing yourself in investigative work. in building relationships with the community before it comes time to report, right? This is really the difference between sort of what I would call parachuting in or not. It's not often sort of physically going to a community in a different country that you don't know, but actually trying to get under the skin of an issue if you've not
been following it closely. And I think it is about then asking those questions of people beforehand. Now, if you're talking about communities in the more sort of traditional sense, right, you want to cover gender based violence. I don't know. I can't remember which country is it in the Pacific. I think maybe PNG, Papua New Guinea probably has the highest rates of gender based violence in any place in the world. And you become fascinated
with this and you want to do a story there. Thinking about how you navigate that culture involves working with local journalists. I often say if I'm working with, if I'm hiring a researcher or an investigator who is not from the community they're reporting on, one of the questions I always add in the list of questions we check off when we're commissioning a story is, how
willing are you to work collaboratively? If you're not willing to work collaboratively and you're working on an issue that you don't know all the sides to, which let's be honest, for most issues, that's most issues, then I don't want to work with that reporter because it suggests to me that they're not open to having the input of other people who might enrich their journalism or actually keep us from fucking up, you know, because they can see blind spots that we don't.
And so thinking about who you are asking, right. So, for example, I've worked a lot. in sub -Saharan Africa, you can't just sort of go into a community and ask the head of the household, the man, which it usually is, about sexual violence. You can't even ask the woman, often in the presence of the man, right? So it's trying to think about how you navigate that. And the same organizations that brokered your access are really the first place to start by trying to learn what you can.
Also, I would suggest reading other people's reporting because sometimes and not always as a sort of example of best practice, but what not to do. So I would look at stories sometimes. I've done a lot of sort of teaching journalism students about sort of. questions around power and agency. And we will look at the stories by
some high flying New York Times reporter. And we will count the people who were quoted in the story for sharing their expertise and who is quoted for just sharing their pain and their experience. And, you know, usually if all the black and brown people have bad or the women have. terrible things happen to them and then everyone else then puts that experience in context. I also think that there is a problem there because, of course, as I said at the start, there are
other people who can inform the reporting. So I would read widely and weirdly. I would speak to the NGO, the charity or the whoever that has brokered you access. I would ask people, but I would also think about the settings in which we ask them to make sure that you are mindful.
And I would pair up with a local journalist and I would share bylines or credits with them beyond sort of fixers, because really those people are sometimes the sort of difference between whether what we just have is data or whether we have a human. centric stories, it's often a fixer. A local journalist who stands in that gap and sort of like elevating them to a role of core
reporting is just just use. If you have any other questions on gender based violence, particularly in terms of the survivor approach, we will also have Leila Hussain coming in in a couple of weeks time who has lived experience of FGM and works as a therapist who will be coming in to chat about how you might know how from the survivor's point of view what it's like to be approached by journalists and researchers and how best to
kind of approach those situations. But we have kind of stumbled on the issue of informed consent and this kind of ties into Stephanie's question that she asked. Stephanie asked what do you do when your victim or the person the people that you're reporting on are children? Have you got any experience of working with child sources and what are the kind of things that you have to keep in mind when doing work with children?
The Afghan family that we were talking about were two sisters and a brother and two of them were minors. In that context, and this is where I'm really grateful for newsrooms that, you know, it might be a pain in the ass when you're going through all the sort of like editing and verification processes, but really important when you're trying to protect people. And we had a long discussion because there was no adult to ask for consent
to be able to speak to the kids, right? They had left on their own with finance and the blessing of their parents to try and get to safety and to make a better life for themselves in Pakistan, which meant that the only people that we had direct access to was them. And so in that scenario, because of the ages involved, it was deemed that they can represent themselves. And so we were able to go ahead. But in other instances, I think we were looking at questions around child pornography
in the Philippines. As a general rule, we have generally not done stories where we would need to work with child sources just because of, I think, some of the sensitivities around doing the kinds of due diligence and, you know, as I said at the start, like they're trying to get the receipts. So to substantiate the claims of a child and oftentimes thinking about who the trusted adult is, who you can go to, I think
that is a very difficult situation. And I think particularly in contexts where you don't have protective services, where you don't have institutions that are there. with the child protection and child safety in mind. We have often gone through third parties, so not so much to get the views of children in situations where they've been
harmed. I worked on, my God, it took us nearly a year, on a collaborative project that we did with an NGO to basically find the experiences of girls using the internet and using their phones. And of course, even trying to get consent from girls in lots of different countries, because this is the other thing that we want to avoid. You want to avoid creating archetypes, right?
You want to avoid, if you speak to one person, one child or one woman or one whoever's experience of an issue doesn't then represent the entire community of people who have had that experience. And so it is, again, very difficult trying to think about how do you presents the one character who's willing to talk to you without trying to extrapolate from that, the lived experience of
lots of people. And so with this investigation, we tried to get the views of young women, so teenagers, in lots of different parts of the world. We couldn't figure out how to negotiate that access without working with an NGO that worked across all of those cultures and those communities rather, and already had a program in place. And so what we did was then craft a specific questionnaire with the NGO to ask of the young women questions that we were editorially,
journalistically interested in. which is in part why it took so long, because it wasn't just survey results that would come from the types of things that the NGO usually surveyed them to find out. And so going through the NGO who has done all the due diligence in the community, who is known, who has gotten the consent of all the parents, and then putting our questions, crafting with
them the types of questions to ask. There was another time we were working on doing something similar for women who had had postpartum depression and working with an NGO to think about the questions we ask, right? So again, the question of language. So for example, those of us who are kind of like chronically obsessively online might be thinking about sort of like trauma and postpartum depression, but in other contexts, people are not using that
language when a woman might have. you know, postpartum, she might be talking about just being sad or being tired. And so working with clinicians in the country where the where we were trying to speak to people to find out what is the language they use, because just asking someone, have you experienced postpartum depression isn't going to get the answer because it is the wrong question. So really, I yeah. To be succinct specifically on children. You know, we have largely avoided
situations where we've had to go to. Well, they've not they've not often come up or we've had to go directly to kids because of what it is to navigate working with minors and trying to get consent and have often instead opted for situations where we can go through sort of broker trusted networks to be able to solicit and get the views of young people. Yeah, thanks for that. I used to work for an organization that did speak to younger people and filmed younger people as well
on their lived experience. So we covered subjects from FGM to, you know, businesses that young people had set up as well. And even to cover that from from the basic level, we had to have several processes that happened from contacting them originally on social media where you know, a lot of young people are posting, whether people
like it or not. And then going through different layers of guardianship and permissions and video interviews prior to the filmed video interview and making sure that everything, it was a huge process to go into a one two minute video that ended up on social media. So when you're entering in discussions, when it comes to child sources, you also have to think about the lengthy process that comes with that as well and how much time you have to invest in that can be really, really
powerful when you pull it off. But it's really important to make sure that they have informed consent and they know that this could be a lasting thing that could impact them in the future particularly. OK, I want to get to more and more questions because we are running out of time. So as if I'll actually ask something related to this. I'm curious on the protection angle. What best practices does Eliza recommend if it does get to the point of potential recorded interviews
with sources? One thing I've noticed a lot of people go to lengths to blur things like faces, but leave backgrounds visible, for example. So what kind of protections do you put in place when you're videoing sources? Yeah, that's a great question. So it's thinking about identifiable locations. I mean, of course, folks who work on sort of like open source research, particularly if it's dealing with sort of geographical information and sort of like topography and thinking about
sort of look. Locations probably think a lot about this much more so than sort of like other journalists, just features, reporters, et cetera. But really thinking about identifying features, thinking about also things like birthmarks. So oftentimes when we have tried to capture videos and we can't show a face, you might want to get a sense because again, that is able to stir emotion and make a connection with the viewer by just, you know, you're hearing a voice and you're seeing
someone rubbing their hands together. If they have distinguishing features, I have dot tattoos on each of my fingers. Anybody who sees my hands will know that it is me. Maybe and so just thinking about stuff like that. So moving them out of their their their location Oftentimes actually when you're also going in particularly if you're doing video interviews And there is nothing subtle
about it, right? And there are ways to make it more subtle, but it is much more visible than just going into a community with a notepad and a recorder or your phone and going into someone's home. Especially if you're reporting on tight -knit communities, anyone who is coming into that situation is going to be a very visible outsider. And so thinking about what you then do when you've got a camera with you and where you interview this person and where you record.
There are many occasions where we've also had to sort of obscure someone's voice or do voiceovers because just running the risk of somebody being identified also by their voice. So yes, think about where you take them. Oftentimes when you're thinking about duty of care, it is often, you know, sometimes it's not the best thing to take people out of their communities. And, you know, let's say you book, I don't know, a hotel and
you think, oh, this is nice. And you're going to put out a spread or something to try and make them feel comfortable. But oftentimes taking people out of their communities into a different area. might make them less comfortable but at the same time recording in their community might require you to be a bit more sort of like subtle in terms of how you approach that and mindful not just of their face but of other distinguishing features including the locations around them.
Great tips. I actually was just writing in the chat that the BBC I used to hate having to go in with the massive camera and the boom mic when you're trying to get a sensitive story out of someone and you're coming in with this huge camera like this and saying, please tell me your story. You just see people kind of hide away. It's quite difficult. It's a quite difficult thing to have to have to do when you're working in broadcast newsrooms, for example. Soto Knife says even
the old fashioned notebook. can be distracting. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're no longer making eye contact. You're now writing down. But just to think about whatever approach, particularly if you're not recording. make sure that your notes can be legible. There have been times when we have been co -publishing with another newsroom and they have wanted to see the reporter's notes as part of their fact -checking. So just think
about that, right? In the ways in which you're organizing your data and your evidence when you're getting to the step where you're being sort of like, where the fact -checking is being done, make sure that someone can verify the things that you have written down, someone has said. And it's not just in some, you know, your own kind of version of shorthand or whatever it is.
Because then it then the last thing you want to do when you're collecting sensitive information is go back to a character and say, I'm sorry, can I get this again? Yeah, Michael, my colleague is also put in the chat and in general on sensitive subjects with marginalized individuals and communities. I basically insisted on interviews and previous work being done in the person's native tongue or when they feel most comfortable speaking with a translator or fix it, even when they can communicate
with me in English, which is another. I think really good points. And we had a question earlier about the risks of being an open source researcher when you're kind of removed from the topic and when you're looking at it kind of through a lens. I'm interested in your perspective when it comes to using imagery or videos of individuals in a traumatic setting. So for example, your team often cover labor abuses like your coverage of bad working conditions and sexual harassment
at diamond sellers debiers. If a video or image appeared on your desk depicting abuses relevant to your story, how would you treat that video or image in order to be confident in the ability to publish it slash protecting those featured in your story? Would you reach out for consent? What kind of precautions would you put into place? Because that's a realistic example of something that many people in the audience would be encountering
every day. And so this is a question of when you don't know the provenance of that video as opposed to you've asked someone to record a video, let's say. Exactly, exactly. For example, you've come across the video on social media, but it depicts something in the story that you're already writing. that's relevant to your case. Well, I think this is actually an example where I feel like this community might have many more examples of best practice than the rest of us do, right,
in sort of like source verification. Because of course, there are ways, you know, whether it's looking at the metadata, trying to figure out when the video was taken, trying to understand who shared it. I'm also I'm interested, oftentimes, thinking about the motivations of the people who shared it. We've often had to have conversations about why could somebody have sent this to us? What might they want? sort of what the might ulterior motives be as we were talking about
that sort of networked effect, right. But yes, I think that, you know, I think we would definitely particularly now Fuller, the Fuller project, while we're moving towards video is not necessarily a newsroom that has traditionally used a lot of video. And I'm thinking of in previous jobs, right, because there is no doubt that the Internet is an increasingly sort of like video led space. And so the appeal. if a video of harms that was appearing in my story landed on my desk of using
it. The question of informed consent of the people in the video. I think it really depends on the access. If you have already established access, let's say you're working on, as you've said, harms in a factory and you've already reported your story or you're reporting your story, that means you have access to the community or maybe it is the labor rights group or the women's group that they belong to or whatever it is. And it's just also about checking with them, again, referring
back to my point about. asking your characters or your sources to actually be co -reporters in some ways and bringing them into this and trying to find out what their thoughts of that content is, as well as the sort of due diligence we would do to make sure that the video indeed isn't doctored in any way, it shows what it shows, the timeline is accurate. What would you add to that as things that you would like to see done before that video could be used? Yeah, I
think you've covered quite a few points. I think in some cases you might even want to consider blurring those features if you cannot find their identity. I think some people often may not think about the individuals depicted as much as they should, so making sure that if you can't verify the identity of those featured and make sure that they are happy to be broadcast to the world, it's quite important to make sure that you're not. kind of showcasing their face in such a
traumatic event without permission. And I think this is what, again, Dr. Lezkovic went into quite a bit in our discussion last. I know we're running out of time, but I have one more question and I hope that's OK. I wanted to bring this up because it's something that I myself struggled with when I was first reporter. And I think if you are new to interviews, it's something that would be difficult when first working with sources.
And that is when a source makes a claim. So, for example, if an individual that you've built up trust for has made a substantial claim within their testimony, how do you approach that when you need to kind of back up a statement with data? How do you navigate that relationship? Because that's quite a difficult thing to do. And I know from experience that it takes often years for reports to get into the kind of practice to be able to kind of have those difficult conversations
with sources. So what's your best practices in your newsroom for that thing? And then we'll wrap up so everyone can enjoy that evening. Absolutely. So I think this just actually it's foundational, right? It goes back to you establishing who you are and what you do and how you do it. I think a lot of people who particularly sort of like traditional journalists assume that everybody, the public understands what journalists do and how they do it. And this is a completely incorrect
assumption. Right. And so it is important once you are establishing a relationship with someone before you even sit down for the formal interview to really situate yourself and to say, this is what I'm doing. If I, you know, if we got to the place where you were telling me your story on record, I will need to ask you. you know, to think about what kinds of ways in which you
can verify it. I often say to the reporters, build some sympathy with your source by telling them how laborious the editing process is, right? Like get them to feel for you because you're like, you know, make me the editor seem like an asshole because like, oh my God, my editor is going to need. to see this, this, this, and this, so that the person has some sense of both the time and the sort of breadth of evidence
that they will need to show, right? Because even when there is a sense of there is a... we also have a duty of care to the people we're accusing of wrongdoing. So if we cannot verify the claims, if we cannot get a right to response, if we cannot show any sort of data, we did an investigation which was about women getting pregnant from having taken contraceptive pills that were faulty. We needed to confirm that these women were in fact indeed on the contraception that they said they
were on. And so we could not work with the characters who had no sorts of proofs. We had to work with those who had their medical prescription, who maybe even still had the packet of the drugs. And then we took that picture, actually, and included it in the reporting to show people what
the pills she was taking looked like. So my best practice for this is be granular and absolutely clear before someone enters into a relationship with you where they have committed to telling you their story because you have made them some promise. that it will be published or it will be shown. It's for them to understand what it will take to get from you speaking to them to
the story going out. And then they become a sort of co -conspirator with you, trying to find these files, trying to get this evidence as opposed to you promising them that all they will need to do is tell their story and then they will never have to speak to you again. That's false because you're going to have to, you know, need to corroborate the story. Absolutely, and obviously communicate that all with your editors as well.
If there is a problem, for example, if a migrant that you're speaking to doesn't have the paperwork that you need to tell the story, communicate that with your editor early on and problem solve it rather than kind of keeping it to yourself, trying to do the interview and then it becoming a problem later on. Eliza, thank you so much. It's been fascinating to speak. with you and thank you to everyone who's sat in the audience
and listened and asked questions. We're going to continue this series on looking into these kinds of topics and ways to keep survivors and those at the centre of your stories protected. Sarah has mentioned in the chat as well. Before we all disperse, I wanted to point out that the Muro code is going through an update with guidance for open source research and the pilot is available till the end of June. So you can check that out at the Gender -Based Violence Massage and New
Channel. Sarah's going through it. She's going to put some notes on there asking for feedback. So please have a look at that in your spare time. Thank you, everybody, for listening and thank you, Eliza, again for coming. Thank you for having me. Bye, everyone. Thanks for coming. Bye. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for listening to the stage talk. If you'd like to catch a stage talk live where you can ask the guest questions, join the Bellingcat Discord server by visiting www
.discord .gg slash Bellingcat. The music you've heard is titled Dawn by Newer Self and is courtesy of Artlist.