Revised code for media practice is repugnant and should be withdrawn

The true ill intentions of the framers of the revised Code of Conduct for Media Practice 2025 lie in the Objects of the Code. It matters not that the Code was arrived at through a “multisectoral” forum that included many stakeholders, because the outcome of all the workshops and lobbying is a poisonous outcome.

These regulations were inspired by ideologues from a bygone era and orchestrated by the State and “stakeholders”, carefully, assembled and prepped to validate and rubber-stamp a fait accompli that, if enforced will, negatively, redefine journalism, free expression, creative design and convert the media into a promoter of vague and politically motivated concepts like “national values”, “responsible and credible reporting” and “public interest”.

Alternatively, media stakeholders, including the Media Council of Kenya, Kenya Union of Journalists, and Kenya Editors’ Guild, sleepwalked into this fiat without knowing and should retrace their steps and walk away from this travesty.

The stringent objects in the Code required of print and broadcast journalists create a new but easy avenue for one to be struck off the Roll of practitioners for non-compliance and an avenue for the State and its allies to impose a pliant media populated by “patriotic” journalists.

For what purpose does a law require journalists to be patriotic? For example, the requirement that journalists must make “all efforts” to verify every incident for “accuracy and authenticity” before publishing or broadcasting is too wide to understand, capable of elastic interpretation and is prone to abuse.

It is a trite ethical policy for all journalists, since historical time, to verify before publishing, but the idea that they must “verify” for “authenticity” and “fact” means they will not publish or broadcast anything until it is proved to be factual in the eyes of the state or quasi-state agencies. That creates a new obstacle of obstructive and unreasonable delays in the dissemination of information for the media imposed by the state and quasi-state bodies and not by journalists’ judgment.

Journalism, since historical times, is not designed or intended to promote “national values” as part of its conscious role in society as required by this Code. Journalists should be allowed to self-regulate based on best practices, training and their own judgment without the requirement to promote any values. Journalists are led by objective facts, however inconvenient and unpalatable. They should not be pressured to advance politically motivated or ideologically laced values, acceptable to the state or the majority in society.

Often, the media is compelled to go against the majoritarian thinking to protect the same public. The state or individual actors should not use statutory power or regulations to impose and propagate a version of public interest and expect the media to follow suit, as it is attempting via this loaded Code.

What happens if state officials deny what is factual or deploy their own alternative facts? Are journalists expected to cower in surrender? Occasionally, journalists have an ethical duty not to publish facts when such facts are inflammatory, but they may also publish inflammatory or inaccurate material when uttered by leaders, when doing so is necessary to expose such leaders’ true character, ignorance or capacity for propaganda, so that the public can judge.

Such judgment should be left for editors and the media to make, and not for the law or regulation to dictate. Imagine a situation where a president threatens genocide or lies in public. Should journalists receive a blanket ban on reporting, or should editorial judgment be the sole basis of what should be published?

Often, reporting the so-called inaccurate reports or inflammatory matters spurs public reaction, criminal investigations and political sanctions for errant politicians and policymakers. The Objects of these regulations are to impose fear or repercussions for behaviour that the state and some state and non-state actors consider to be false news, unpatriotic, and distasteful. The Code, without pretence, seeks to revise free expression, journalism, and impose a new moral code and foster a “patriotic” press.  It must be withdrawn or outlawed by the constitutional court for its unreasonable overreach.