By David Ohito
The Kriegler Report censured the conduct of some media houses, particularly FM stations.
It accused them of propagating hate speech and biased coverage. The report says: "Some media houses, unfortunately, did not observe media ethics and standards. They did this understandably to win a larger audience for commercial purposes or for prestige. As a consequence, they ended up not helping Kenyans but added fuel to the flames."
It added: "Call-ins by FM radio stations and live television interviews and talk shows attracted enormous interest from listeners and politicians."
Politicians used the occasions to lure voters and attack opponents. The Kriegler Commission noted: "The challenge facing the ECK was the difficulty of controlling materials aired by the print and electronic media."
They admitted before the elections that some of the materials aired were unacceptable.
The Kenya National Human Rights Commission defines hate speech as "any form of speech that degrades others and promotes hatred and encourages violence against a group on the basis of religion, race, colour or ethnicity."
It includes speech, publication or broadcast that represents as inferior, or degrades, dehumanises and demeans a group.
Hate speech was widespread in political rallies, text messages sent by political parties and operatives, emails, posters and leaflets.
The report says: "When travelling around the country, Independent Review Commission (Kreigler team) noted that this problem was widespread.
Professionalism
"There is a general view that most radio stations lack professional journalists to control an audience or regulate discussion. The journalists lack training in conflict reporting or moderation."
Words and phrases such as "settlers", "let’s claim our land", "people of the milk to cut grass", "mongoose has come and stolen our chicken", "madoadoa" and "get rid of weeds" aired by FM stations were ill-timed, the report adds.
But Kriegler proposed other avenues of punishing the FM radio stations, instead of banning them.
The stations serving the big ethnic groups were blamed the most. They are Kameme FM and Inooro FM for the Kikuyu, Ramogi FM and Lake Victoria FM for the Luo and Kass FM and Chamgei FM for the Kalenjin.
Muuga FM for the Embu and Meru, Mulembe FM, West FM and Chettambe FM for the Luhya community, Musyi FM and Mbaito FM for the Akamba and Egesa FM for the Gusii were also criticised for the way they conducted themselves during the election. "Some programmes sent divisive messages. The programmes were aired raw and moderated by persons who have no training and skills in managing such shows, some having been recruited merely because they are entertaining or attractive," the report says.
The commission proposed intensive training for presenters and programme controllers of such stations.
Chaired by retired South African Judge Johann Kriegler, the commission was to investigate the conduct of last year’s General Election.
