MPs must close ranks and force changes to Media Bill

-Editorial

Amid all the ill-feeling oozing from the various camps in the debate over the implications of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s handling of the Kenya Information and Communication Bill is the clear division of opinion over who should control the media. The media is the fourth pillar of democracy, hence its designation as the Fourth Estate.

A compliant media that serves the government of the day is nothing short of an extra tool to keep the truth from the masses.

Dictatorships cloaked in the garb of democracy often begin by exerting control over what you can read or publish, and that appears to be the motive of those behind the Bill. Kenya’s political history would be very different were it not for a handful of men and women, hardnosed journalists who took on the regimes of Uhuru’s father Jomo Kenyatta and his successors to report what the Government wanted hidden.

They made big sacrifices for the sake of democracy and so the fact that we are even having to debate on whether or not Kenya needs a free media devoid of State manipualtion is an insult to these men and women whose bravery ensured that the truth always got out, regardless of the powerful State forces ranged against them.

We are appealing to the Members of the National Assembly to go back in time and read about the history of Kenya’s fight for multi-partyism. Many of those who voted for the Bill, regardless of its offensive clauses, might have done so out of anger or emotion, but they have a chance to make amends.

Members of Parliament from the Jubilee coalition must break ranks with their President and his group of advisors who are using their superiority of numbers in the National Assembly to emasculate hard-won freedoms etched in blood and tears and enshrined in the Constitution.

They must join hands with like-minded MPs from their rivals in CORD and garner the necessary two-thirds majority to force amendments of the contentious clauses in the Bill. Media is the backbone of a democratic State.

It is the watchdog of the three main pillars of the State — the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. Right now it might work for Jubilee to have a media that sees no evil and hears no evil (as far as Jubilee’s sins of omission and commission are concerned) but a time will come when they need a voice, when the oppression becomes too much, and there will be none. If a statutory body replaces a self-regulating body then where is the line between regulation and freedom of speech and expression?

Yes, the latter is not absolute – the media must be accountable and responsible, but State control over media is not the way to go.

Our MPs might wish to recall the words of John Milton written in 1664 that remain true today: “Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolised and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks.”