Kenya's sports reporters do not want to think, ask questions or work

Three columns ago, I changed the order of play and wrote that Kenyan football is not only deader than a dodo, but is going nowhere, not even to hell even though it is full of sins. In the process, I mentioned that Kenya used to have sports journalists, but the factory which used to produce them closed shop.

For that sentence, some spineless semblance of sports reporters plucked some courage and said my piece was good, but I “should have provided solutions.”

In essence, I should have been happy over the compliments, but I was offended. By being complimented by anyone who earns a living by virtue of being referred to as a Kenyan sports reporter, I had been heaped together with sports federations’ officials who love hearing paeans from these men and very few women who lack a world view of sports and whose vocabulary is limited to “kick off” even for golf tournaments.

The songs of praise, composed by my non-professional colleagues ensconced in the coins’ pockets of sports federation officials, become loudest when Kenyan teams are losing in third rate competitions. The songs make officials happy and give them the impetus to pat themselves on the back while running around like headless chickens — and that is an insult to headless chickens.

Telling others to “provide solutions” has been the lame excuse from adamant officials who mismanage football, or any other sports disciplines. They are emboldened in their resolve to ensure Kenyan football goes nowhere by the arrant nonsense written in their favour by flippant sports reporters.

It is pointless to insist I was right to write that Kenyan football is going nowhere since the results are there for all to see. The ensuing denials, blame games, accusations, counter-accusations, and the shameless listing of achievements mean that no one wants to admit that things are worse without any chance of them getting better.

Blaming Sam Nyamweya’s Football Kenya Federation and his under-bred cronies is an exercise in futility because they will defend their mistakes and call others names, yet it is a fact that there are many things they are not doing right.

Ideally, all those mismanaging football in Kenya are not contrite because they believe and want people to believe they are the best even as results prove them wrong.

As such, people who have the wherewithal to think, and see that football as it was initially known, was nabbed, tortured, raped, murdered and buried in the offices and boardrooms of entities which are tasked with promoting it, should only blame the gods for being anti-Kenya. Maybe it is time to organise another National Prayer Breakfast, and ask the deities to be good to Kenya this August of 2014 and not punish it with man-made disasters like it happens every August.

 

While Kenyans will be praying, nay, feasting at the funeral of football, they should ask the gods to help Kenya’s sports reporters, the group which has contributed to the death of Kenyan football and other sports disciplines by agreeing to be bought off cheaply — and cannot ask the simplest questions since they have sold their souls and brains for a pittance, and lack the ability to up their game.

Contributed in its real sense is too positive a word to describe what these men and very few women have done to sports, and specifically Kenyan football.

They have connived with the shameless loudmouths, the slagheaps who think only about themselves, the petty politicians who shamelessly live off the sweat of footballers and have the spine to claim how Kenyan football — which has nothing to show for its existence — has reached stratospheric levels only comparable to teams that lost matches in the World Cup.

How silly can a group of individuals whose collective incompetence is known in football fields the world over and whose only excuse is that it is affiliated to FIFA get? Going by the events of the past few days — which are a culmination of what has been going on for years, and a confirmation that they are irredeemable — they can get very silly.

And they share that silliness with the people supposed to question their activities but have been silenced by the jingling of coins thrown their way. Of course Kenya used to have sports journalists who knew their job and their worth. Nowadays, Kenya has sports reporters who worship poverty and whose silence can be bought off with a packet of peanuts, quite literally, and their brains sold off for less.

They do not want to think, to ask questions, to work. They are not curious, but are indolent and want easy ways of doing their job which entails writing boring, non-creative stories, and saddling their editors, the sports journalists of yore, with trying to making sense out of the gobbledegook.

For instance, whenever Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) plays, their stories must have the word “taxed.” When it is Ulinzi’s match, the stories must have the words “disarmed” and “outgunned” and when Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) take to the field, phrases such as “frozen account” or “broke in to the vault” must be in their copy.

People, when Ulinzi, KRA and KCB are respectively disarmed, taxed and have their account frozen once, it is fine but when it happens in every match, then you have a problem. It means you are working on a template; you are not creative; and you should not call yourself a sports reporter.

Let’s get personal: Many months ago, I told one sports reporter writing for a bi-weekly sports magazine that his stories are boring. I warned him the new magazine will fold up and Kenyans will not realise it because currently, all local dailies can fail to publish sports pages and no reader will complain.

He was offended and rambled on about his litany of awards and places in the region where he had worked. He added he does what the editor — one of the best sports journalists in Kenya — tells him to do, meaning he does not own his stories.

Needless to say, the magazine folded up a few weeks later, and until now few people have realised it ceased to exist because they did not even know of its presence despite it being launched in a highbrow event.

I have attended many sports events where organisers write stories for reporters who are there because they do not understand the sport — and in keeping with their religion of worshiping poverty, they ask for hand outs.

How can such people ask the right questions, or see where the problems lie, or even think about asking the right questions?

What would stop Kenya’s bumbling, fumbling and bungling federations’ officials from taking advantage of such ignorant people to cover for their incompetence by giving them a pittance? That is how bad things are, that I have to take a pause...