Kenya’s media face arduous task of proving its credibility

Ever since the Security Laws Amendments Act 2014 was assented to the President, there has been hue and cry from Kenya’s media practitioners over fears that the new law will curtail their personal and professional freedoms.

Despite utterances to the contrary from politicians and the drafters of the law, the media’s fears were not allayed, and now that the Bill has been assented to, albeit after an acrimonious debate, it is only a matter of time before their fears come to pass.

Of course politicians allied to the ruling coalition, and Kenya’s legion of ‘communication experts’ who crawl out of their nooks into television studios to castigate the media — without which they could have remained unknown — were emphatic that Kenya’s media had failed to regulate itself.

It was only proper for legislation to be passed to put the media in check, for the good of the country, they said.

For several months, Kenya’s media have been on the defensive. Wherever they admit that mistakes might have been made, their admission is as meek as their response to the verbal onslaught against them by the Government, more so the Executive.

Since the last General Election, the media have tried to prove that they are indeed steadfast in keeping the Government in check and do not pander to the whims of the administration.

“I wonder whether the relationship between the media and the Government today is any different than it has always been,” says Prof Levi Obonyo, the dean of Daystar University’s School of Communication, Media and Performing Arts.

“Look back at Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s government. While the old man himself was not noted for calling out the media, his functionaries were used to it, and the media bent over backwards not to serve as watchdogs of that regime.

“Think of the arrests of journalists and raids, and then the activation of criminal libel under Mwai Kibaki. The relationship between the current regime and the media is more subtle but probably not out of the ordinary.”

Even then, it has been an arduous task for the media to prove their innocence. Journalists have been accused of not asking the hard questions, or simply not asking questions at all when they get a chance.

Also, it has been said that Kenya’s new crop of media personalities are just showmen interested in aesthetics, and do not know whom to ask what, when and where.

Ideally, the narrative is that the media have lost credibility.

“They have not lost credibility yet,” says Henry Maina, a journalist and lawyer who heads the Eastern Africa office of Article19, an international non-state body that defends freedom of expression and information. “They are on the verge of losing their credibility and the ability to do credible stories.”

Maina says the slide started even before the last General Election, when the media thought it was their duty to keep peace. Thus, they failed to ask the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) questions concerning tendering for election materials and their efficacy.

“They were parroting whatever IEBC said,” Maina charges, adding that it could not have been any different if IEBC had its own media outlets.

But Owino Opondo, a Nairobi-based legislative and media consultant who worked for a media house in different editorial and training capacities until recently, disagrees.

“This notion is pushed by ignorance of exactly what takes place in the newsroom,” Opondo says. “The media published and broadcast many stories that questioned the procurement of the voter registration and voting equipment and they raised questions when the equipment collapsed on the voting day.”

He is emphatic that the media asked why IEBC took long to release results of the presidential tally, and, why in some regions the presidential voting pattern did not match the number of registered voters.

It will certainly take the Kenyan media a long time to disabuse Kenyans of the notion that they were on the side of IEBC, and that they toed the government’s line. International journalists were the first to accuse the Kenyan media of becoming a willing ally of the establishment.

“I think it is true (that they were complacent),” says Obonyo. “The media had been bashed by the political and civil society, with every Tom, Dick and Harry holding a seminar to train them in this and in that, and in the end, the media became captive.”

He says it did not help matters that Joshua Sang was at the International Criminal Court: “I think the media became overly cautious, whether by design or as a consequence of these developments, and sought to just play it safe.”

While non-academicians might agree that the media did, and have been doing, a great job, it is not in doubt that the media have often tripped on their own shoelaces.

Days after the Jubilee administration marked 100 days in office, Kenya’s senior journalists trooped to a State House breakfast meeting, and that visit is still hanging over the media’s head, with the narrative that their freedom remained in the presidential mansion’s kitchen sink.

“Senior journalists were jostling for positions in government and that is why the State House visit was successful,” charges Maina.

His charge might not be too far-fetched because the Presidential Strategic Communication Unit was unveiled that day, and the unit has a number of former journalists.

“Even after the spokesperson’s man’s job was gone, there was still a window of hope that they could be appointed as press attachés in Kenya’s missions or as communications heads in different ministries,” he says.

Incisive pieces

However, when that window of hope closed, there was a “renewed media which later lost its fire because the Government threatened to cut advertisement or not to pay outstanding debts.”

Maina insists that journalists were initially hoodwinked by the Government that they have freedom, but the financial carrot and stick policy has been used against them, and their few remaining teeth extracted.

“The media in Kenya is doing fine and also performing abysmally poorly,” Opondo philosophises. “Many of the mainstream media houses strive to highlight government excesses through incisive investigative pieces such as KTN’s Jicho Pevu, but they are few because of human capacity problems, inadequate resources and a political system largely averse to criticism, helped by a rogue Parliament.”

He, however, admits that “the propaganda machine engaged by the Jubilee team outfoxed the media since the campaign period.”

Opondo says “judging from the meek and somewhat choreographed questions editors asked during that State House breakfast, it was clear the media were not keen on pursuing a deep scrutiny of the Jubilee Government.”

When it comes to questions, Maina and Opondo agree that there is a lack of training in institutions and newsrooms.

The issue is that media personalities — Kenya’s new age journalists — are interested in infotainment, and lack the wherewithal to ask questions, a charge the media counters by saying they give viewers and readers what they want.

From an academician’s view, Obonyo says the demands exerted by citizens determine the shape adopted by the media.

“We need to educate more people, build the middle class and that will reflect on the kind of media we will have,” the professor says.