Matters of Race and Respect

I have been looking at two complaints dealing, broadly, with the reporting of race. One concerned the publication of the photograph of a Kenyan man who had died as a result of Aids. The other concerned the use of the term "mules" to describe drug couriers, particularly when applied to Jamaican women.

The first complainant said he would boycott the paper unless he was given an acceptable reason for the use of the picture of the dead man. He saw it as an example of what I described on a previous occasion as the prejudice of distance, although he did not use that term. "What you cannot get away with in your own country or culture should not be an issue to play with when it relates to other cultures," he said. Would we, he asked, publish a picture of a dead white person?

The question has been asked and discussed before. In fact, the Guardian has used pictures of dead white people in Northern Ireland, in former Yugoslavia, and in Zimbabwe, for example. On each occasion the particular circumstances have been considered.

A Guardian journalist who has reported extensively on Aids in Africa told me: "Obviously it goes without saying that we must not show a dead black man if we would not show a dead white man in a similar situation in this country. If Aids were taking as devastating a toll in the UK as it is doing in sub-Saharan Africa, I think it is fairly safe to say that we would indeed be showing pictures of white people who have died ... I'm not against the use of pictures of the dead - black or white - if they are powerful images that move the reader, enhance understanding of the story and are acceptable to the family."

The story in this case was about the way in which a cultural custom requiring the family of a dead person to cater for mourners on a comparatively lavish scale was imposing ruinous burdens. The increased frequency of death due to Aids was a significant exacerbating factor in a town, described as the poorest in Kenya, in a province with the country's highest rate of HIV.

The photograph, taken independently of the written report, showed Jarred Apamo in his coffin, with his youngest daughter looking through a window in the raised lid. He had died in Nairobi as a result of Aids and been taken back for burial in the same part of western Kenya, the home of the Luo people, from which the Guardian report was filed. The photographer, who has been living and working in Kenya for 18 years, had followed the body on this last journey with the full cooperation of Mr Apamo's family.

The assistant picture editor who selected the photograph said, "If we had run a story on funerals in Ireland, Spain or Italy, where caskets are often open, we might have used a very similar picture."

In the circumstances I hope the reader who complained will come to share my view that the use of the picture was appropriate and justified.

The second complainant objected to the term "mules" as "dehumanising and sexist". Her complaint was prompted by the repeated incidence of the term in recent Guardian articles about Jamaican women who were used for the purpose of smuggling heroin, usually by swallowing it in latex wrappers.

She addressed her complaint initially to the journalist who had written two of these articles. In her letter, she acknowledged the attention paid to "the political and social circumstances" of the women but objected to, and called for the complete abandonment of, the "deeply offensive" label "mules".

In fact, these particular articles were very clearly concerned with the desperate circumstances of the women who were driven to act in this role and with the "devastating" effect on their families and communities. In one of the pieces the journalist visited Jamaica to look at the contributory causes. At the time of her writing (October last year) the 450 Jamaican women serving sentences after conviction for carrying wraps of cocaine in their bodies accounted for more than 10% of all foreign women in prison in Britain.

The term "mule" in the Guardian has been applied not only to women, but to men, and to both black and white people. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it has been used in connection with drugs since at least 1935.

In the examples I have looked at it has almost always been used in a context that would imply sympathy for the people to whom the term, in the sense we understand it, was accurately applied. The negative effect of frequent repetition should, however, be considered.

The picture of Mr Apamo was used on January 10. The issue of "mules" was raised by Ligali (www.ligali.org).