For a newspaper renowned for virtually never expressing a mea culpa, the NY Times responded with extraordinary speed and sensitivity to the pained outcry from Kenyans over its having published a deeply offensive photograph showing victims of the Al Shabab terrorist attack last Tuesday.
The Times listed many of the reasons for Kenyans’ anger, including double standards, and said it was going to convene a group of editors to draft clearer guidelines on such photographs.
And in asserting that “we can do a better job of applying consistent standards” for both the US and the rest of the world, the Times at least implied that such photographs would not be published again in the paper.
This is a huge victory for Kenyans, as this debate that ordinary Kenyans started has been widely reported in the global media and pushed it to address an issue that has rankled not just us but all developing countries.
I am confident the outcome will be new policies which end the publication of such photos except when considered absolutely essential.
The Media Council of Kenya, on the other hand, writing on behalf of an aggrieved nation, ended up letting the country down by threatening to revoke the credentials of Times’ correspondent in Kenya if the paper did not “within 24 hours remove the photograph and apologize unconditionally.”
It added that the Times was “hereby required to inform the council of [such] action within 48 hours.”
But the specific clauses the letter quotes from its charter indicate that such photographs should be “avoided’ or “discouraged.”
Since there is no prohibition against the use of such photographs, the stated punishment the Council proposes is rather draconian. In any event, the Times correspondent played no role in the publication of the paper.
These threats portrayed Kenya as a country that would take extreme actions against errant media which had offended our sensibilities, rather than defamed or misrepresented our country.
I also wrote to the Times on this issue, and received a reply from Associated Managing Editor Philip Corbett, who among other things accepted that in the publication of this photograph, “it's fair to question whether we have always accomplished [our stated] goal of consistency” in applying its pictorial guidelines across the world.
My own view is that the Times, and the others, should not publish such photographs. I also believe that western media does publish gory images from the rest of the world that it would not if these had been taken in their own countries.