The Sinai Skeleton Photo: A Family Matter

No one looking at the Star’s September 13
front page photo of a charred skeleton — all that was left of one of the Sinai
fire victims — could have avoided an involuntary gasp. But the reactions that
followed were, predictably, far more varied.

“Sick”, “you guys shock me”, a “new low in
photojournalism”, “all that mattered to you was SALES” were among the typical
negative comments sent to the public editor or posted on the Star’s website, on
Twitter, or on Facebook. Reader Moses Wasamu argued that “sensitivity to the
dead people’s relatives” should have precluded the photo’s use, a point echoed
by Mercy Kanyoi in a complaint to the Media Council, copied to the Star, that
called the picture “not only traumatizing and disrespectful, but also extremely
unkind to those that were affected by the Sinai fire”.

One of the far fewer positive reader comments
asked: “What shows facts more than a picture?” The Media Council itself, while not
singling out the Star by name, issued a statement criticizing the media’s use
of “repulsive” Sinai photos that had been published “without regard to public
interest and those of affected families.” Curiously, however, when I asked Chairman
Levi Obonyo what further action the Council planned to take, he said none. “We
were responding to what the public was saying,” he said. “But the public
doesn’t understand all the difficulties” that editors faced.

As in the case of the Muliro Gardens
sex-in-the-park photo of a few months ago, The Star reacted to the barrage of
criticism with what I considered an ill-advised editorial defending its
position. (If you believe you’re right, why not just stand your ground?) The editorial
noted that “the body was burned beyond recognition”; it also argued that the photo
had “overriding news value” and “should cause both the public and civil
servants to ask searching questions.”

The editorial served only to elicit more
anger. One response, by a reader self-identified as Rukwaro and posted on the
Star website, read in part: “Pause and think of the child who may never see her
father again after the fire. Forever, the image that will come to mind whenever
she remembers her father will be (that picture).” The post also noted how little
beyond hand-wringing had occurred in similar past situations and questioned why
the photo could be expected to produce real change.

Inside the newsroom, reactions were as
mixed as they were outside. One person who remained confident that the right
decision had been made was Jack Owuor, who took the skeleton photo. When I
talked to Owuor the morning that the photo ran, he said he’d been receiving a
constant stream of calls from photographers at other news organisations congratulating
him on the shot.

They could see what many among the public could not: a
carefully constructed composition showing not just the skeleton but also piles
of smoking remains, a group of firemen, and, in the distance, a crowd of
curious bystanders.  Some of his
friends were unhappy with the photo, Owuor said, “But colleagues in the media
said ‘This is great.’”

Recalling the events of the day before, Owuor
said that after arriving at the scene, he did what he always tries to do in
such circumstances, which is to figure out what is going on. “You have to look
around, understand the situation at hand and decide what will tell the story,”
he said. In this case, after talking to rescue workers and getting a sense of
the magnitude of the disaster, he took about 200 shots before the one that made
the front page. To him, he said, it spoke of the horror of petrol explosions in
a way that years of accounts of earlier petrol explosions had not. “It’s time
to show people what these things can do,” he said.

By 4:30pm, Owuor was back at the Star’s
offices, where several senior editors reviewed a couple dozen of his best
shots. While most favoured the skeleton photo for page one, editor Catherine
Gicheru was opposed. “I just think it’s wrong,” she said later, describing
herself as having reacted more with her gut than with any logical set of
arguments. “There’s a limit to what we should put out there. By buying us
readers are saying they believe we have them at the back of our minds and they
trust that we will sift and mitigate what they see.” Moreover, she added, a
newspaper should not regard itself as separate from the public it serves: “We
have a community, we have a family.”

Deputy editor Charles Kerich, who pushed
hard for the skeleton photo, said that his overriding reason was the need to
show the gravity of the situation. Sometimes, he said, that takes precedence
over concerns about shocking one’s audience. “Do you say you should never show
pictures of the victims of the Holocaust because they are so bad?” he asked.

CEO William Pike, who made the final call,
said that his primary argument for using the skeleton shot was “essentially the
same as those opposed: it had the most emotional impact.” Also, he noted, “We
didn’t have a picture of the actual explosion. But this picture showed the power
of the explosion.”

At first I was fully persuaded by the
arguments put forward by Pike, Kerich and others. But Gicheru’s comments about
community kept nagging at me, recalling as they did the fierce opposition in
the US to the use of pictures of people falling or jumping from the World Trade
Center after the 2001 terrorist attacks. A recent commentary by a journalism professor
at New York University noted that while such photographs were widely published
in the rest of the world, US newspapers used few or none. The photos, she
wrote, “have been rendered taboo, vilified as an insult to the dead and an
unbearably brutal shock to the living.”

Clearly, there is something different about
publishing a photo of victims whom you know, or might know, and victims who
live thousands of miles away. One group represents members of your “family”, the
others are strangers whose deaths are, to put it bluntly, curiosities, not
tragedies. In this case, the Sinai residents were our family, and we were,
indeed, brutally shocked.

So, should the Star have published that
photo on page one? If you had asked me the day afterward I would have said yes,
but as time goes on, I grow more unsure (even as I find myself increasingly annoyed by self-righteous moralizing).

One thing I do know is journalists have to
make decisions in the heat of the moment, and in this case, as I learned by
talking to all those involved, editors engaged in discussion and debate right
up to the deadline. That speaks of a seriousness that does the paper credit. I
also believe there is no shame in publishing a dramatic photo at least in part
because it will “sell papers”; after all, if a paper doesn’t sell, it won’t be
around long.

But if you pressed me, I would say that
while the skeleton photo was, in my opinion, the most dramatic and skillfully - shot
picture of the day, I wouldn’t have used it. That, of course, is a judgment
made in hindsight, and with the luxury of time to think.

The public editor’s role is to respond to reader
criticisms and to offer opinions independent of the newspaper management. (See the Star website for more
information.) Write to the public editor at publiceditor@the-star.co.ke.