I'm very pleased that Yessi Bello Perez has been able to join us for this last part of section four of the course. Yessi is one of my former students. In fact, she actually sat in on the black hawk down lecture. As part of doing history in her first year. This is a little bit of a recap for what she did, not that many years ago. Let's be polite about it. Yessi, amongst her other roles and jobs, is the Associate European Editor for a Fair Observer. And thank you very much for coming along today. >> Thanks for having me. >> Could you tell a little bit more about the Fair Observer website and what it tries to achieve? >> Sure. Fair Observer is a media platform and it's a relatively new start up company that's growing quickly, and what we try to do is to portray a 360 view of current affairs. So instead of actually telling people about the news, we try to analyze why they happen and give an objective, well, as objective as we can, take on things. >> Okay, that's great. Which news stories in the recent past have you been running, and from perhaps the European perspective given your specialty. >> Well, I'm on the European desk, as you know, and I haven't really been working on new stories per say in the recent weeks. But we are working on things like press freedom, especially taking into come what's happening in Italy and Georgia. And obviously we've hoping to publish doing something on corruption and economic downturn in Europe. >> Just from your view as, if you like, a member of the public, but with clearly some historical background in your studies, how does the unordered image, which had the torn underpant, and the altered image, in any way, change or view of what was portrayed? Were you any more or less offended by what you saw. A, unaltered and B, knowing it had been altered. >> I have been exposed to in which manipulation and propaganda before. But as a member of the public, I wouldn't say that I was more or less offended by either photographs. I think that it doesn't make a difference on whether the man in the picture was naked or not, I think. As long as the photograph gets the message across. And obviously I don't think it's being respectful to the Gentleman's family in either situation, so definitely an eye-opener. >> Okay, so given the choice, you would prefer not to see those images in the public domain. >> I think as a member of the public, I think it is important that we are given the chance to view things as they are. And obviously in the UK we do have press freedom and we're very lucky to have that. So I think that it's actually up to the publications to come up with to decide whether that photograph can be exposed. And whether it will become offensive to people. I know that obviously photographs can make people react in many different ways and there will be people that will be offended by something that perhaps I won't. But I think as a general guideline, I do think that it's important to publish photographs as long as they abide to what the publication's conduct of ethic is. >> Okay, that's great. I think that's very revealing, but you prefer the information to be in the public domain so long as it's working to a code that all can agree to. >> Yeah. >> You mentioned a little bit earlier, before we came into this room, about the coverage of the Madrid bombing. >> Yeah. >> Now, talk us through your reactions to something which was very immediate, and got blanket coverage at the time about what was shown and what was not shown. >> I was very surprised by the Spanish media's take on the events. Obviously, I think it was a bit of a controversial one whichever way you look at it because they had very easy access to the crime scene. I do think that perhaps they should have restricted what they published only because obviously the images were quite horrendous. At the same time, I do understand as a reporter, as a photo journalist, if you're right there and then, and you're trying to do your job and you're trying to report what was a massacre, it's important to publish things that you feel comfortable with. But looking back at what happened in London during the London bombings, I know that, perhaps the UK media is much more conservative than the Spanish media in that respect but I think they will also protected in a way because they didn't have such a free access to what had happened because obviously it happened on the round >> [INAUDIBLE] because I'm thinking about the images of the bus, which had its rook torn off. But that's all it's like an inanimate subject to the explosion as opposed to seeing individuals or the bodies of the deceased in the crisis. Okay, thank you for that. I'm interested. You mentioned that in the context of your own work with the Fair Observer, you're generally dealing with stock images. What sort of decisions would you be making, or your editorial team be making, about which images you select? And do you consider where the images have originally come from? Beyond that, have they been manipulated, is that a major concern? >> Fair Observer has their own code of conduct. But I think, for me as an associate editor, it does come down to whether I would want to see the image if I were a reader so if I come across an image that I don't feel comfortable with, I definitely wouldn't get it published. >> So for the stock images that you're using, how far down the track, if you like that process between the photographer making a decision in the field to a publisher actually saying, this is right for my audience. And presumably, you're getting to the point where there's not very much of an opportunity to refer back to the original source, so to speak. >> There is a very fine line, with regards to what the Fair Observer wants to capture. And with regards to what we want to publish. I think that obviously we're committed to both our readers and our contributors and as I mentioned earlier, we have to, where possible, make sure that what we publish is acceptable universally. Obviously the fact that we're struggling with stock footage, in a way it's a bit of a hindrance because it means that we can't refer to sometimes original sources and we have to pick up things from blogs, or Google images and such. So it's not always clear where the image is coming from. But I think in a way, it also is a positive thing because it gives us a lot more to work with. So if you do it and don't like one picture, or you don't feel comfortable publishing that very same picture, it also gives you the opportunity to kind of see what else is out there, obviously trying to find a reliable source but go with another option. >> Okay, thank you. Now, the narrative that I've used in analysis I've drawn reasonable heavily from the book Under Exposed. I'm sympathetic to the challenging of the authenticity of photographs and why they are used. Now, given your degree and the study that you've done, how do you feel about modern newspaper, media, reporting, more generally about if you like the immediacy or the need to covering images and events as they happen. >> If you are covering an event and you take a photo there and then, it could be printed within hours and so on. So I do think it makes everything much more available to everyone but I do think that they have a responsibility as a media institution to make sure that what they publish Is not going to offend anyone, anywhere in the world. Thinking about social media and things, that's one area that we can't seem to control. And obviously, something that's not taken lightly by newspapers as well, because they obviously all have social media presence. But I think it would be interesting to see where it all goes in the near future. >> So this ties up to something I mentioned much earlier, which is the archiving of Twitter feeds, of Facebook and other websites in the UK by the British Library. The discretion of the media to pause before publishing is important. Because what we see unconstrained publishing can put things out that people, they might actually feel but may regret in a public forum. So do you have any qualms about saying the story is here we have to go with it? As opposed to I am not sure we should be running with this image? >> I think that if you've got pages to the fill it's a very tricky line to cross, but at the same time, I don't think that we should publish anything just for the sake of publishing because at the end of the day, you want to uphold a reputation and kind of respect the standards that are set by your employer. >> There's space to fill. So is it the case of whatever comes along, whatever its merit, if it's quote newsworthy, it goes out? >> I think that is what is happening at the moment and what has been happening in the past. I do think that as technology advances and online becomes even more prominent, I do think that we will be seeing a lot more with that. >> Okay, very grateful that you've come to see us today. And thank you for your time. It's been great catching up with you. >> Brilliant, thank you for having me.
