The word is positive
The Kenyan media has panicked – and revealed their flaws
15Dec2008 Filed under: Politics, Society Author: alkagsA story is told of two children, who lived with their parents in a village far away. One child was a devious one and the other was just a bad boy. The devious child hid his own flaws by constantly talking about the other child’s badness and everyone focused on that. One day, the two boys were sent to the river to fetch water. Each was given a pot and they trotted down to the river. As they bent to fetch water, one boy slipped and his pot fell into the water. The other boy put his pot down and quickly jumped into the river and saved the pot. Unfortunately, the pot was broken.
When they got home, the boy with the broken pot yelled from the gate telling all of his brothers dirt and wetness, “look at him, he is wet and dirty!” and his mother could not hide her chagrin until she discovered the broken pot. She said, “he may be wet and dirty, but a good bath can fix that. No amount of yelling can fix your pot.”
the media has panicked
I have resolved that the Kenyan media has panicked. That is why our national news on TV consist of nothing else as the media screams, “Look he is wet and dirty!” pointing accusingly at Parliamentarians with whom we do have problems. But lets be honest here, the media has to relook at itself with a great deal of depth. Freedom of information is one thing that is very important and that must be guarded with all our might. But truth is perhaps even more important (not all truth need be proclaimed).
The media has been found with its indiscretions – it has had a hand in polarising Kenyans – along tribal lines, along political lines and so on; it has fanned the tribal issues by making big news the tribal comments of politicians; it has sensationalised non-issues (quoting “sources close to the source”) at the expense of important weighty issues by simply making it big news; it has filled our lives with half truths and imbalanced news, flaunting the Journalists’ creed on numerous occassions.
Worse yet, the media has proven that even with all the bodies around it – Media Council, Editor’s Guild and so on – it is impotent in its ability to police itself and to take serious measures against those among them that have gone against the creed.
Perhaps the media’s handling of the issue of the Information and Communication Bill that is awaiting signature is the most recent illustration of this:
- Ngwatilo has put it better that I could in her latest post: “I guess that’s the main local news… i guess its better than the 25minutes that went to talk of the media bill in the news last saturday night, from 9pm-9.25pm, including a lecture/speech by the presenter person to the president/the public… (?!) And I still don’t know what’s between Section 1-87, and everything after.” It is fact that in this issue, the media has failed to uphold the part of the journalists’ creed that says, “clear thinking, clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism” Innuendo and raucous proclamations – such as the “lecture” Ngwatilo refers to have been prevalent.
- Everything else that is important to us, Kenyans, has been placed in the backburner (look at Ngwatilo’s news at 9 post) or indeed given a complete blackout. What is the maize situation today, how is crime, how is – oh, i don’t know: the weather? In my view, this has contravened and betrayed the first clause of the journalist creed: “that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust.”
Let us be clear: no, we do not want the media controled by the state or arbitrary powers as they suggest. yes, we do give the media the mandate to keep us intimately abreast of any and all misdeeds by the political class that is so riddled with impunity, their impunity is itself impune.
But.
We do not want the media to be an unchecked power. We do want serious action taken on the media that exaggerates and gives us just the news. We are able to make up our minds on what is right and follow it. We want truth – unvarnished, ungarlanded, unsieved, simply served truth.
Activate, sure. But activism without responsibility is as bad as – if not worse than – impunity.
Here’s the question to be answered: Even as we lobby the president together to refuse assent to the IC Bill, we must show some substantial reform within the media industry itself to regulate content, restraint, accuracy and fairness.
The pot is broken. No amount of heckling or other people’s dirt will hide that.
UPDATE: The PS, Dr. Bitange Ndemo recently said at KiCTANET mailing list:-
“I would be the first person to resign from my position if I know that we are putting forth a bad law. During the consultative fora I raised issues on the now contetious section 88 my intetion then and even today was to have it struck out. The stakeholders refused and because media had sent junior officials, we could not manage to remove it. Although it was not one of the substantive amendment, we asked that parliament strikes it out. MPs in their wisdom brought the sectiom back. If you know our legislative process, I have do not have power over parliament.
I had hoped that media and Government could restrategize but instead media started propaganda and distorting facts at the same time inciting Kenyans to violence similar to what they did in january.
As for the WB funds and computers, I shall have the Board’s response. We have not procured any computers yet.”
Also see comment by Media Institute in the commenst section here, or click here
7 Responses to “The Kenyan media has panicked – and revealed their flaws”
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About Al Kags
Al Kags is a poet and writer based in Nairobi Kenya. He is the Author of the Book - Living Memories (http://living.alkags.com), a collection of true stories narrated to him by ordinary people who lived in the extraordinary times of the 1950s.
As a poet, Al Kags has published the Quarterly Colour Series of Poetry, a series of ebooks since 2009, which have been read by over 1,000,000 people around the world and which are contributed to by people from all over the world.
For his day job, Al Kags is an acclaimed Marketer and project Manager.
Eddie Kiama
December 16th, 2008 at 6:03 am
The kind of impunity the media is accusing the politicians of is the same thing the media wants to get away with. The had several years to enact self regulation and sat on their hands. Now they are crying wolf and they never even criticised their peers who were fanning tribal animosity! Funny enough, the political class or their cronies own the mainstream media, so there must be something they know that we don’t if they can stand by and let the bill get where it has. No one in his right mind would support raiding of media houses. That would be taking us back to mediocrity! Freedom however has limits and the media was given ample time to create self-regulation mechanisms. The didn’t.
Flooding the air waves with self-promotional one sided tirade about the bill is intended to try and incite us to the streets. We can see right through it! Sit down among your peers, come up with workable solutions, table them. Why do you want to be the only unregulated sector in the Kenyan society? What rights do you have that the rest of us do not? Even in the worlds biggest democracy, the USA, cross media ownership is highly regulated and for a reason. To subdued the beast that the Kenyan media is becoming.
Remember Kimunya? The media helped try and convict him in the court of public opinion on the behest of parliament who went ahead declare him guilty until proven innocent. Well, enjoy a taste of your own medicine.
David ndungu
December 16th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Very aptly put Al Kags. The bill is definitely not in order in its current form but the media must stop playing this silly games of “we can police ourselves and anything done to a journalist, even if he/she is clearly out of line is an affront to media freedom and an attempt to take us back to the dark days”. Looking at the newspapers, watching TV and listening to radio, one would think (and most Kenyans already do) that the bill only contains 2 items: the ministers powers to confisicate broadcasting and printing equipment and reading of mail that is in the post.
Stephen Partington
December 16th, 2008 at 8:24 am
(As commented on the Concerned Kenyan Writers list)
am entirely against the IC Bill in its present state, but: I am glad someone’s said this ‘heretical’ thing, for I have some concerns with the media myself. Journos in this group should assume, teehee, that present company is excepted. I’ve just woken up, so won’t be coherent, but:
1. Yes, those ‘offending clauses’ need to be expunged, and the way in which they weren’t expunged prior to the vote needs checking, as does the way in which the ‘law’ was pushed through (it reminds me of the parliamentary coup pulled by Wilberforce when he, on a better issue, managed to push through an anti-slavery bill that didn’t look like an anti-slavery bill), as does the ODM’s rather unconvincing claim that they are now against the bill (where were they on the day?), and this is something I have been taking an interest in. But I haven’t been convinced by the media’s main ‘revenge’ accusation, that MPs voted for it only to teach the media a lesson – I have seen no evidence to support this, and it seems a classic case of the media participating in that hearsay-and-rumour of the sort that can be, as we saw post- December, extremely dangerous. Show me the proof of this accusation – an ‘Oh, but Stephen, we ALL know that this must be the case’ won’t do, I’m afraid…
2. I speculate that Al and most reflective types would agree with me that the media has engaged in another dangerous line since this awful bill was presented: the claim that they should be able to police themselves, as this ‘is the trend in the West’. Yes, our media performs a vital role, and must not be ‘gagged’ at any cost when issues of genuine public interest are at stake, and yet I don’t trust
the full independence or integrity of our very moralistic, fly-by- night and business-arse-licking media, which if not corruptible is at least more indebted (see how ads have proliferated) to advertisers than I have ever seen before… And not just advertisers. The media should not self-regulate, as this puts them above the law in the same way that we complain (rightly) that MPs place themselves (possibly) above the law by refusing to pay taxes on allowances. I want a media
that can be held to account. Since possibly January, but certainly in the past week, the media has set an agenda rather too strongly for an unnaccountable body, and we seem to be in danger of letting media types self-idolise. (This is not at all to doubt the bravery of many in the media, or the correctness of what they do…)
3. The envoys’ suggestion that the media must play the role of ‘opposition’ worries me a little. The media, yes, must hold thse who commit wrongs to account, and yet this should be a ‘role as it becomes necessary’ (which it might be now), and we should never look to an unelected group of professionals to be our opposition, even though it is tempting at the moment… Did you vote for them? Who will hold the media to account when they do wrong in the future?
No, a law is required to cover certain aspects of the media – and, contrary to the nonsense spouted by some wish-fulfilment editors, I know of no country that doesn’t have laws governing the media in some form, even if only on the ‘low level’ such as ‘unaccetable intrusion into a person’s private life when this is obviously not in the public interest’…
So, defend the media against excessive legislation AGAINST it (get rid of or rewrite this thing, and ironically, Mr Media Man, yes, argue as you have for ‘democracy to be reinstated by an undemocratic presidential veto that overturns a parliamentary vote[!!!] – sad, innit), but don’t be so liberal as to give the media free rein of the sort that they can today use for what seems to be a good cause (of their OWN choosing) and tomorrow can be used for a very worrying ‘anti-
people’ BAD cause (again, of their choosing.) We should not binarise: MPs inherently bad VERSUS media and civil society inherently good. I trust sections of the media only slightly farther than I could throw an MP, if you see what I mean.
I look forward to you disagreeing with some or all of what I say…
Yours, a fly in the ointment, and wanting his potentially authoritarian-populist media held as accountable as parliament,
Stephen
Stephen
Alvas Onguru
December 16th, 2008 at 8:33 am
D’accord! Pogishio was on KTN a few nights ago and he said somethng that froze me in my tracks. He said the electronic media is not capable of regulating itself because they use a public resource, the frequencies allocated o them, and someone needs to make sure that public resource is utilized well on behalf of the people. That, we will not hear from the media itself!
alkags
December 16th, 2008 at 9:00 am
THE MEDIA INSTITUTE had this to say:
The price of negligence and incompetence
OUR VIEW
While the Media Institute condemns the outrageous selfishness exhibited by Members of Parliament in passing what is clearly a retrogressive law, the media must not escape culpability for what has befallen it. It has become norm for the media to cry wolf when faced with any encroachment on its turf, especially its own welfare.
In fact, in the public domain, the strident wailing of the media has become all too familiar and sympathy is waning. And why not; there are many sectors of our society whose cry for attention when their welfare is similarly threatened by government action or legislation hardly get a fraction of the interest the media devotes to its own selfish interests. Truth be told, the media is insensitive and uncaring most of the time.
And it gets worse. The media are not even competent in superintending over their own matters either because they are out of depth, they cant fathom the implications of some developments – such as the just enacted Bill – or they are just consumed by their pursuit of profit and basic competition to comprehend the threats to their survival or operations. That cannot be said of the ICT sector, which too is the subject of the same Communications Amendment Bill 2008, but which has had its issues discussed and thrashed out in numerous online lists and discussion forums.
Not surprisingly, some media chiefs only came to grips with the implications of the Bill when it had sailed through the First Reading in Parliament a month ago. They long left the job of minding the rights enjoyed by the media almost exclusively to non-governmental organisations that the media cares less about.
Consider this: A fortnight before the Bill went to the Third and final phase in the House, an alarmed International Commission of Jurists (Kenya) called a meeting to sensitize the media about the impending law. And when they turned up, some of the media chiefs not only knew zilch about the Bill but what they did after that was even more scandalous. All of them were unavailable for the action proposed to forestall the passage of the law. Even when a press conference was called to raise the alarm, all of them were either busy or conveniently absent.
Rather than mobilize the sector, they retreated to their usual boardrooms and adopted the ineffective strategy of molly-coddling MPs, ministry of information officials and other emissaries through informal methods to drop selective clauses deemed to be threatening to commercial interests (principally, the prohibition of cross-ownership). The media did not even give adequate publicity to the Bill prior to the brouhaha, let alone the other aspects relating to ICT. Needless to say, we failed spectacularly and now we are back in our regular dark pit of moaning.
What was a clear case of an attempt to abridge freedom of speech was conveniently couched in terms of commercial interests, protection of frequencies, turfs, and so forth. The reporting of the aftermath itself has been terribly wanting. The Communications Bill has all of a sudden become ICT Bill, Media Bill, and other names we have baptised it. How is the public to keep track of our lamentations?
In our bid to attract sympathy, ok appeal, to the public, we have also pressed the sensational button, and the inaccuracies are staggering. For one, the offending Sect. 88 was not introduced by the new Bill. It is already in the existing Communications Act and what was on the table was whether to repeal it. That of course, is clouding issues and confusing the bigger picture.
At stake is an attempt by the political class to equip itself with the ammunition to circumscribe the fundamental freedom of expression, and arm itself with the ammunition to control the media if it is deemed as unbecoming or threatening to its interests, diverse as they may be. In this regard one cant help but sympathise with the wing of the coalition that is always crying about being shortchanged in the power sharing deal – of what benefit is this new law to the objective of freedom of information in this country?
Yes, to be candid, the media is far from innocent. Some of the vulgar content on the airwaves at supposedly neutral hours should not be allowed. Yes, on their own they have demonstrated utter irresponsibility in setting standard thanks to the greed for profit. But to sit and wait for government to legislate their content is perhaps the worst demonstration of lack of leadership among the media management.
While the Media Institute joins others in appealing to the Head of State to demonstrate statesmanship and respect for democracy by not assenting to the law, it must be observed that the media has overspent its goodwill and earned its just fruits.
Our hope is that the President will not be motivated by short-term parochial interests to endorse a bad law. The Bill clearly impinges on freedom of expression and the media, which are democratic principles that he and other leaders have professed to respect. To turn around and begin to claw back on that at a time when the country is on the democratic assent and awaits proper constitutional reform will be both anachronistic and an undeserving of his legacy.
http://www.eastafricapress.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=573&Itemid=79
Clifford O. Oluanga
December 17th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Reluctantly agreed – mainly due to the unco-ordinated and ameteurish approach that the Parliament has taken to passing bills – too casual. And that summarises many of the issues afflicting the country (cf Obaks remark on Fred Odhiambo – casual).
Someone ought to do something. Unfortunately only the media has the balls, however wrinkled, to make noise. The rest of us wont mind as long our beer doesnt get cold.
BTW: Could it be another move by politicians to distract the media and public on major issues? I noticed while Mutoko and the rest were fighting taxes, media bill etc, the common mwananchi talked of unga unga! What about the tribunal? ECK? Rigged MPs?
makena
December 17th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Hello,
I think your blog is a great sucess. Keep uo the good work for years and years to come.
Your sister (Now 10)
Makena Stewart