Media should speak out for public on all matters

The removal by the National Assembly of the offending clauses in Hon Keynan’s Powers and Privileges Bill was a significant win for Kenya. It sent the message that MPs do actually react to public opinion. Some of us, maybe naively, were left with the belief that there may still be some hope on Parliament Road.

But the win was more for the media, which had waged an unrelenting campaign against the anti-media clauses. The clauses were so offensive and the media assault so strong that the Speaker and the Leadership of the House had to intervene, using of an oft-ignored clause in the Standing Orders to hold the Bill and thereafter cause its amendment.

It is clear from this action that if the Speaker and the House leadership took a principled stand on issues that are an affront to the citizen, many of these issues would not see the light of day, tyranny of self-interest or numbers notwithstanding.

While we must celebrate the result of the media campaign, one is left with a niggling feeling that just like MPs who push many Bills out of self-interest, the campaign by the media was also driven primarily by self-interest, and the public interest was only a collateral beneficiary. It is amazing that the media campaigned so severely on the media-related clauses in the Bill and totally ignored other clauses in the Bill whose effect was to injure the public interest quite significantly.

There were clauses in that Bill that limit rights that even the Constitution clearly states cannot be limited. There were clauses in the Bill that allow Parliament to summarily attach people’s property in execution of committee rulings and that purport to exclude the jurisdiction of the courts in decisions of that committee.

None of these were analyzed by the media. Just like Parliament, what mattered were their bread and butter issues. This is by no means a new phenomenon. On three occasions the media has coalesced around an issue and excited the nation until government was forced to retreat or revise its position, the issue related to the interests of the media as an industry and the public interest was peripheral.

When the ICT Ministry sought to introduce digital broadcasting within timelines that compromised particularly the Big 3s commercial interests, the media campaigned relentlessly as one on the issue, even fudging some facts so as to make its point. What was essentially a push for commercial interests became a matter of national importance as the media played its full hand.

When later on the amendments to the Kenya Information and Communication (amendment) Bill and the Media Council Bill, were published, the media went on the offensive and managed to obtain significant concessions from the Ministry, which reviewed the Bill significantly after the President returned it to Parliament.

A review of the law clearly showed that the Ministry had proposed some amendments that were against the public interest. Again, the issues that concerned the media, and on which it was relentless, were bread and butter issues; matters that impacted media independence and its commercial interests.

On these issues the media spoke as one and even fudged the truth as one. Am I suggesting that the media should not be passionate and lobby on issues that concern it as industry? Far from it. Any industry worth its name must obviously look out for its interests in the first instance. But the media has a special place in a democracy like ours where other oversight institutions are easily compromised or crippled.

It remains the greatest protector of the public interest. Expectations that the media will therefore consider their primary role as that of protecting the public interest are legitimate. The public therefore expects that the same passion, the same resources, the same unity that the media uses to promote their interests would be extended on other issue that may not affect the media directly but affect the public interest.

That has not been our story. The media, of which I am a peripheral member, owe the public a renewed and united passion on public interest issues. That is the minimum return for the investment that Kenyans have made for the freedom that the media enjoy today.