The Media Observer Magazine JANUARY-MARCH 2013

OBSERVER THE MEDIA

JANUARY - MARCH 2013

A PUBLICATION OF MEDIA COUNCIL OF KENYA

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MEDIA ELECTIONS

MEDIA & ELECTIONS: Lessons for Politicians Are Women Candidates Covered Differently?

Shrinking Space for Journalists in Kenya To Endorse or not to Endorse Presidential Candidates The Media Observer

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About Us The Media Council of Kenya is an independent national institution established by the Media Act 2007 as the leading institution in the regulation of media and in the conduct and discipline of journalists.

Vision A professional and free media accountable to the public.

Mission To safeguard media freedom, enhance professionalism and arbitrate media disputes.

Our Core Values • Integrity • Independence • Professionalism • Transparency and Accountability

Council’s Role, Mandate, Functions and Authority The Council draws its mandate and authority from the Media Act CAP 411B. Its functions are to: • Mediate or arbitrate in disputes between the government and the media, between the public and the media and intra-media.

• Promote and protect freedom and independence of the media.

• Promote high professional standards amongst journalists.

• Enhance professional collaboration among media practitioners.

• Promote ethical standards among journalists and in the media.

• Ensure the protection of the rights and privileges of journalists in the performance of their duties.

• Advise the government or the relevant authority on matters pertaining to professional, education and the training of journalists and other media practitioners.

• Make recommendations on the employment criteria for journalists.

• Uphold and maintain the ethics and discipline of journalists.

• Do all matters that appertain to the effective implementation of this Act. • Compile and maintain a register of journalists, media practitioners, media enterprises and such other related registers.

• Conduct an annual review of the performance and the general public opinion of the media, and publish the results.

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CONTENTS Media Council of Kenya P. O. Box 43132 - 00100 Nairobi Tel: (+254 20) 2737058, 2725032 Mobile: (+254 727) 735252 Email: info@mediacouncil.or.ke

Editorial Team: Chief Executive Officer Haron Mwangi Editorial Board:

Media Council Gets New Chairman

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To Endorse or not to Endorse Presidential Candidates 7 The Visuals, the Painful Truth

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The Harm Principle in the use of Surreptitious News 13 Gathering Techniques Editorial Independence In modern-day Journalism

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The Shrinking Space for Journalists in Kenya

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Otsieno Namwaya

Gender Representation in the Media

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Consulting Editor

Of Media Coverage, Ethnic Calculations & Electoral Choices

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Why Journalists Must Shun the ‘Brown Envelope’ in this Election

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Media Coverage of Polls Critical for Smooth Change of Guard

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Media Ownership and the Link to Political Power

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Joseph Odindo Mitch Odero Levi Obonyo Martha Mbugguss

Gathenya Njaramba Editorial Coordinators Victor Bwire Jerry Abuga Contributors Jerry Abuga Joe Kadhi Edward Mwasi Peter Mwaura Roy Gachuhi Caleb Atemi Victor Bwire Jane Thuo Martha Mbugguss Nsamba Morris

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Mark Oloo Tom Olang’ Wellingtone Nyongesa Oloo Janak Othieno Nyanjom Design & Layout Brett Communications Limited Tel: 020 4453730 Email: info@brettcom.net Website: www.brettcom.net The Media Observer is published quarterly by the Media Council of Kenya with assistance from Ford Foundation. The views expressed in articles published in this publication are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect those of the Media Council of Kenya.

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Editor’s Note

Heavy burden on the 4th Estate as Kenyans troop to the ballot box

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n March 4, 2013, Kenyans have a date with destiny and whatever the outcome of the General Election, we will make history.

The elections will be the first under a new constitutional dispensation hailed by many as one of the most progressive, not only in Africa, but the world over. The voters will for the first time vote for six positions unlike in the past where we only elected the President, Member of Parliament and the Councillor.

This time, we will also elect the Governor, Senator and Women Representative.

Elections determine the direction a country takes on governance, development and freedom, often guided by the Constitution.

Elected leaders get the mandate from voters to govern the citizens in the next five years. As such, when a voter is inside that lonely ballot box, he or she should make the right choice for the country’s future.

Former United States President Ronald Reagan once remarked, “A people free to choose will always choose peace.”

Now, in our highly polarised presidential contest, every voter should be free of inhibitions, fear or threat to life. The voter must also be armed with information on all the candidates on the ballot paper. And that is precisely where the ‘Fourth Estate’ comes into the picture. The media have a duty to inform the electorate on the policies espoused by the candidates. Journal-

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ists are expected to be objective, accurate and fair in their reporting.

With the hindsight on the unfortunate happenstance after the 2007 disputed presidential election, the media must also be more sensitive and avoid fuelling tension among communities.

Indeed, several commissions that investigated the 2008 post-election violence in which over 1,300 lives were lost and some 600,000 Kenyans uprooted from their homes, did not absolve the media of errors of commission or omission. They pointed fingers at the ‘messenger’ and said media houses could have done better to avert the bloodbath.

Indeed, Kass FM presenter Joshua arap Sang is among the four Kenyans facing crimes against humanity charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the 2008 madness.

Journalists play the key watchdog role of checking excesses in government, and during elections, they must show a high sense of responsibility.

In this first issue of ‘The Media Observer’ for this year, veteran journalists, some of whom have covered nearly three General Elections, share their experiences and offer a few lessons.

They tackle issues like media ownership and the link to political power, corruption in the media, coverage of elections, impartiality or lack of it in the media, journalists’ safety while covering polls and ethical conduct among journalists. We hope it makes a crucial read as Kenya decides who takes over power for the next five years. As always, we welcome your feedback.

Gathenya Njaramba, Consulting Editor

Media Council Gets New Chairman Mr Joseph Odindo, the Editorial Director of the Nation Media Group.

By Jerry Abuga

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he Editorial Director of the Nation Media Group Mr. Joseph Odindo is the new chairman of the Media Council of Kenya. Mr Odindo was elected during the 13-member Council’s sitting at the Council on 15th January 2013.

Ms. Sarah Nkatha who represents the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) at the Council has retained her position as the Vice Chairperson of the Council.

Mr. Odindo, who is also a member of the Board of the World Editors Forum, is a long-serving media practitioner and represents the Kenya Editors Guild at the Council. He replaces Prof. Levi Obonyo. Mr. Odindo has been a member of the Ethics and Public Information Committee of the Council as well as the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Council’s quarterly magazine, “The Media Observer”.

In December last year, new members were appointed to the Media Council of Kenya. The new members were sworn into office at the Milimani Law Courts in Nairobi by High Court Principal Judge Mbogholi Msagha. They included Ms Nkatha, Nation Media Group CEO Mr Linus Gitahi representing the Media Owners Association,

Ms. Mercy Achieng Odada representing the Kenya Correspondents’ Association, Ms. Grace Munjuri representing the Public Relations Society of Kenya, University of Nairobi lecturer Dr. Muiru Mungai representing public universities, Daystar University lecturer Dr. Rosemary Nyaole -Kowuor representing private universities and Mr. Peter Wakoli from the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication (KIMC).

ing the Media Owners’ Association, Mr. Eric Orina and Mr. Kiprono Kittony representing the Kenya Union of Journalists and Media Owners’ Association respectively.

The Media Council of Kenya is composed of 13 Council members representing the following media stakeholders: Media Owners Association, Kenya Union of Journalists, Kenya Editors Guild, Public Relations Society of Kenya, Kenya Correspondents’ Association, Law Society of Kenya, Kenya News Agency, Kenya Institute of Mass Communications and public and private universities.

“It has been noted that sections of the media contravene the Code of Conduct for the Practice of Journalism as enshrined in the Media Act. It is my hope that in your new capacity you will provide guidance on the work of the media”, said Justice Msagha. Also at the ceremony was the Media Council of Kenya Chief Executive Officer Haron Mwangi who affirmed that self-regulation of the media in Kenya has taken root. He said the Council will continue undertaking its role, including boosting its media arbitraSome of the new Council Members upon tion function.

Other members of the Council include: Mr. Ezekiel Mutua representing Kenya News Agency, Mrs. Nelly Matheka, represent-

being sworn in. (From right) Media Council of Kenya CEO Mr. Haron Mwangi, Mr. Linus Gitahi, Ms. Grace Munjuri, Ms. Sarah Nkatha, Ms. Mercy Achieng Odada and acting Director of Information Mr. Olewe Owiti.

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Media Council to hold

2 Journalism Awards nd

The Council has placed a call welcoming Kenyan journalists to submit work published or broadcast in the local media within the last year, including up to 15th March 2013.

The 17 awards categories to be competed for will be: The ICT and Telecommunications’ Reporting Award, the Children and Youth Affairs Reporting Award, the Gender Reporting Award, the Environment Reporting Award, the Sports Reporting Award, the Tourism Reporting Award, the Photographer of the Year Award, the Cartoonist of the Year Award, the Business Reporting Award, the Good Governance Reporting Award, the Young Journalist of the Year Award, the Reporter of the Year Award, the Cameraman of the Year Award, the Health Reporting Award, the Digital Journalism Award, the Free Press Kenya Award, the Television and News Bulletin Award and the Journalist of the Year Award.

By Jerry Abuga

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n efforts to promote professionalism in the practice of journalism in Kenya, the Media Council of Kenya will hold its second media excellence awards.

The Media Council of Kenya’s second Annual Journalists Excellence Awards [AJEA] will be held on 4th May 2013 as part of celebrations to mark this year’s World Press Freedom Day. The awards also seek to encourage Development Journalism in Kenya in respect to Vision 2030.

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A new category has been introduced in line with the Council’s mandate of promoting press freedom. The Free Press Kenya Award will seek to

recognise efforts made by journalists to promote, contribute and propagate press freedom in the country.

Other new categories are: The Tourism Reporting Award, the Digital Journalism Award and the Television and News Bulletin Award which will replace last year’s Best News Anchor of the Year – Television Award.

The Council has also introduced the Digital Journalism Award in recognition that new and emerging technology has greatly impacted on modern day journalism. The award will recognise journalists who show the ability to creatively use new media or online platforms to package and present powerful stories that affect peoples’ lives.

There will be two entry categories for the awards namely: Individual and Group news production (Producers and Cameramen).

Only journalists accredited by the Media Council of Kenya are eligible to submit entries for the awards.

Entry forms can be obtained at the Media Council of Kenya offices or downloaded from our website: www.mediacouncil.or.ke.

To Endorse or...

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

...not to Endorse Whether Kenyan media houses should openly declare support for certain candidates or political parties remains a main item of debate. JOE KADHI explores this contentious topic

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edia owners and their editors are today facing a Herculean task. They have to make up their minds pretty soon on whether or not to endorse a presidential candidate in the current elections in Kenya.

Past experience must have shown them that doing so by jumping on the bandwagon of tribal balkanisation can be extremely costly; and may even lead to a massive boycott by readers, viewers and listeners who feel their candidate is being marginalised by any individual media house. Yet failure to endorse a candidate may also be interpreted as an indication of professional myopia which lacks visionary agenda-setting proficient responsibility.

Media endorsement in election coverage is today accepted by many journalism scholars in many parts of the world as a completely different approach of election coverage from the one camouflaged in media bias.

Whereas the former is based on a thorough examination of party manifestos ostensibly designed by the concerned candidates; the latter is an emotional exercise founded on party affiliation or tribal loyalty of whoever is powerful enough to determine the endorsement of a political candidate by a media house.

Two of the most highly respected scholars who have seriously studies the subject of media bias and political endorsement of presidential candidate are Prof. Brian G. Knight and Dr. Chun-Fang Chiang of Brown University in Rhode Island. In a study conducted in 2008 the two scholars concluded that when journalists are potentially biased in favour of one of the candidates they always succeed in making voters who are their readers , viewers or listeners accept the candidates they endorse.

Their empirical finding was that endorsements were influential in the sense that voters were more likely to

support the recommended candidate after publication of the endorsement.

According to them the degree of this influence, however, depended upon the credibility of the endorsement.

And that is the main problem now facing the Kenyan media owners and editors who may wish to endorse any of the eight candidates seeking to become Mwai Kibaki’s successor as the country fourth President.

The major question that the Kenyan readers, viewers and listeners are likely to ask will probably be how credible the political endorsements by the media for any of the candidate will actually be.

The other important question for journalists to ask is whether or not it is at all possible to make a credible endorsement for any of the current political candidates for any of the many offices in the complicated multiplicity of elections in Kenya today. And yet another additional The Media Observer

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unpalatable question that many are bound to ask is whether the current breed of leaders, particularly those who were members of the just ended tenth Parliament, are worth endorsing at all.

Voters in Kenya will always remember that it was these same leaders who last year amended both the Political Parties Act 2011 and the Elections Act 2011 to dilute the democratic electoral process in such a manner as to favour the political parties they own; and protect their guaranteed leadership in those same political parties. Recent events in the current elections have clearly shown that it is almost impossible to conduct free and fair party nominations in Kenya mainly because of the amended laws.

How then could any journalists call for the endorsement of any leader whose records show little respect for democracy?

According to the just published KNDR (Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation) which examines how prepared Kenya is for the elections we have embarked on political parties continue in their old ways; and some are allegedly recruiting members through fraud. The report exposes how parties are still tied to individuals who founded them, and some are still based on ethnic identities and loyalties. As a result of this, the report says, party primaries conducted in January failed to demonstrate any clear break with the past. It concludes that the behaviour of political parties has detracted from requirements of the Political Parties Act, 2011, and the Elections Act, 2011, which legislators have mutilated or watered down to serve their political survival interests.

Be that as it may, the efforts that the media fraternity, led by the Media Council of Kenya, made to change the electoral process, particularly the election campaigns themselves, from being predominantly tribal oriented into becoming issue oriented operations, are commendable. That being the case the stands taken by various political groupings on important policy issues are worth examining before making any suggestion about credible media endorsement of the said groupings.

At a recent Naivasha workshop for editors the issue of media endorsement was briefly discussed 8

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when Macharia Gaitho pointed out the difficulties editors go through to determine the ideological differences between any political groups in Kenya.

According to him most of the ideologies purported to be supported by various political groups in Kenya happen to be identical because of lack of originality. He claimed any serious examinations of these so-called ideologies would reveal similarities that would expose the absence of any seriousness in basing political parties on specific socio-political conceptual principles. That was before Raila Odinga started a rigorous campaign on the land issue. Today the two major political groups of Cord and Jubilee have such different ideological approaches on the land issue that those divergences could in fact form the foundation of media choices of which group to endorse.

Talking of land policies Raila Odinga seems to have made up his mind to make it an election issue as long ago as July 2009 when he tabled a list of 49 very highly respected individuals who, according to him, had been irregularly allocated land in the Mau forest by President Daniel arap Moi. Calling it “the list of shame” the Prime Minister managed to detonate enough political missiles that disturbed the conscience of many dogmatic leaders who came out strongly in his support.

Among them was the principled and respected Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai and the then forthright Environment Minister John Michuki.

Mentioning the land issue at every opportune time since 2009, Raila blew up the matter to a major crescendo soon after his nomination paper were accepted by the IEBC as the official Presidential candidate for the Cord alliance . Moving in his characteristic style of pomp and splendour he made a huge crowd of supporters defy heavy rains in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park when he launched a personal attack against the Jubilee alliance’s Presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate William Ruto. Accusing them of what amounted to land grabbing and owning huge tracts of land when ordinary wananchi were cutting each other’s throats over as little as half an acre of land, Raila called upon his rivals to surrender some of what they owned to the landless people.

Naturally media houses would insist on making the Presidential candidate backing these principles expound on them to not only make them easy to understand but also to enable editors to thoroughly examine them in comparison with those offered by rival groups before using them as the benchmarks for endorsement.

All hell broke loose following Raila’s bombshell. No sooner did he try to walk where angels fear to tread than the shit hit the fan igniting a war of words between the Cord alliance and the Jubilee coalition. Journalists had to call a spade a spade and engage in reportorial presentation of the sensational running story.

They could not take sides as the ideological differences on land issue were not quite clear. As the hot fire of words was quickly spreading in different parts of the country both the Chairperson of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission, Dr. Mzalendo Kibunjia, and the Inspector General of Police, David Kimaiyo, stepped in to stop the debate on the land issue. As a matter of fact they tried in futility to remove the whole subject of land reforms from the election campaign.

Both the Jubilee alliance and the Cord coalition considered the land issue of such importance as to include it in their manifestos. According to the Cord group Raila’s Administration will address historical injustices on land, including, but not limited to, squatter problems, displacement of indigenous communities and involuntary resettlement of populations. The manifesto says Raila will establish and enforce sustainable land-use standards and benchmarks. Naturally media houses would insist on making the Presidential candidate

backing these principles expound on them to not only make them easy to understand but also to enable editors to thoroughly examine them in comparison with those offered by rival groups before using them as the benchmarks for endorsement.

Before any media house endorses Raila’s candidature on the basis of his land policies, for example, it would have to convince its readers, listeners and viewers that it took that deliberate step after weighing the pros and cons of the policy as compared to the land policies offered by all the other presidential candidates especially those offered by Uhuru Kenyatta who happens to be Raila’s main opponent. That would entail examining Uhuru’s land policies which claims that millions of Kenyans today have no property to call their own, yet remarkably, only 20% of Kenya’s land is privately owned.

According to Uhuru’s group public land is 13% of the land in the country with 67% being community land which has been traditionally managed by local authorities, with communities who actually live on it having little benefit. As far as the Jubilee coalition is concerned a significant portion of private land is untitled, with poor records of ownership which in some areas is made worse by absentee landlords. The manifesto says, as it is now, community land has little or no commercial benefit for the individuals and communities that live on it. This, according to the group, has been made worse by poor basic infrastructure and unclear land rights which have fuelled inter-community conflict.

Mr. Joe Kadhi makes a contribution at a Media Council of Kenya media monitoring briefing.

The manifesto further claims that by adjudicating and issuing titles for community land, Uhuru’s Administration will unlock it’s potential as a commercial asset in addition to providing communities a secure place to live. This, it claims, will result in increase in food production, improved security for individuals and communities, enhanced investment in and development of land and importantly minimise conflicts that arise from ownership disputes. Jubilee alliance concludes that by improving the skills of our youth and expanding economic opportunities available to them, it will reduce pressure to own land and economic reliance on subsistence farming activities.

The editors’ main task is to compare and contrast the two policies and expertly convince their readers, viewers and listeners that one of them is what the country needs. Only after taking such steps can any media house expect its endorsement of any candidate to be taken seriously. At the time of writing this analysis Musalia Mudavadi’s Amani Manifesto was launched which means this exercise would have to be repeated to include it in the examination of its land policies. For the endorsement to be as credible as Prof. Brian G. Knight and Dr. Chun-Fang Chiang would recommend the entire content of every manifesto available would have to be subjected to thorough examination followed by intense personal interviews with the concerned candidates.

There are many other studies that have been conducted by scholars on media endorsement, especially newspaper endorsement of candidates in American elections. Among the most respected is the one conducted

last year by Kyle A. Dropp, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University and Prof. Christopher Warshaw of the Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who investigated how political endorsements influence election outcomes. They conducted their study through a series of large, nationally representative survey experiments in which they established that an endorsement’s impact depends on the level of ideological congruence between the voter and the media house making the endorsement.

According to these two scholars American voters reward Congressional candidates when they perceive that an endorsing newspaper is ideologically similar to their preferences but punish endorsed candidates when they perceive that the source is ideologically distal. Naturally these findings are not that relevant in the Kenyan situation as Kenyan readers , viewers and listeners do not know the ideological stands of any given media house vis-à-vis the political candidates they cover. Apart from S.K. Macharia of Royal Media House, who has come out openly in support of Raila Odinga, other media houses claim to be neutral and impartial in covering all the candidates. Indeed even the Royal Media house itself claims to be professionally accurate and fair in its election coverage and therefore ethically impartial. If the ideological stand of every media house was publicly known as is the case in the US it is difficult to know how influential to the readers, viewers and listeners they would be after officially endorsing candidate.

What is worth noting from Kyle A. Dropp and Prof. Christopher Warshaw’s studies is that endorsements can have the opposite effect and even boomerang. Last but not least it is worth pointing out that even after endorsing candidates, journalists are expected to strictly adhere to the ethical standards in all the stories they write about election campaigns except what is published on op-ed pages or specifically broadcast as commentaries.

Mr. Joe Kadhi is a former Managing Editor of the Daily Nation and currently a journalism lecturer at the United States International University.

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The Visuals, the Painful Truth

The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words “denotes to the notion that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. Sounds too obvious? EDWARD MWASI explores the subject that has been ignored by many.

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ity streets and other shopping centres around the country are awash with newspapers and other print media. What is eye-catching though, is the manner in which the vendors display their merchandise. They do it in such a manner that even those that are not intent on buying them readily get themselves copies. The urge to buy is driven in part, by the manner in which the news is packaged by the various media houses.

The publisher understands his reader very well and therefore, would do everything possible to cajole him or her through strong content and excellent projection. With the

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emergence of modern, sophisticated software and technology, all is almost possible.

A cursory glance of a newsroom will obviously provide useful insights.

Newsrooms are usually busy where every individual in the production chain wants to deliver the best for the market. A writer or reporter composes a story with a view of catching the editor’s eye. Therefore, unrefined stories are, in newsroom parlance, spiked. It’s the aspiration of every writer to secure some space in the paper obviously with the much coveted byline. Photographers on the other hand, apply all the tricks in the book to capture the best photo,

to earn a prominent position in a publication, a byline and some fee for it.

Cartoonists and illustrators on their part would work into the wee hours of the night lampooning some of the popular public figures while caricaturing others in a light hearted way. It is, to say the least, a very competitive industry.

From time to time, the subject on media responsibility pops up and attention is drawn to the written word. Very little on images taken by photographers or the input of the graphic designer is said. This is in spite of the age-old saying that a picture speaks a thousand words. The rallying call is: For as long as there is nothing obviously wrong, we are safe.

What is this that is not obviously wrong? How much is not wrong?

What is the measurable? Even a drug addict would tell you they started taking in little by little substance with the hope of not taking in excess.

They end up locked up in a cage.

This is what media publications and newscasts do to readers and viewers respectively.

When photography was first started, its value and power emerged from the fact that it recorded nature more accurately than an artist’s brush.

Because of this, people trusted it.

They believed it portrayed reality and the truth.

There came motion pictures and eventually television. The public saw something even more accurate compared to the initial photo. This was definitely a revolution especially when audio accompanied it and pictures moved. At some point it was in black and white and later colored.

This puzzled mankind.

Most recently, the 3D movie which was largely regarded as the end of invention was introduced. We obviously know this is not the end.

The fact is, all these do not represent nature fully. The furthest man has gone so far is to mimic nature, even with the latest motions. None has been able to capture nature naturally.

If what mankind has been able to produce in images is still not good enough to be termed as nature, it follows therefore that more attention needs to be drawn to graphics and pictures in communication especially during important functions and events such as election time.

Discussing contents of a photo and how the viewer may easily misunderstand it makes most photojournalists quite uncomfortable. Some dramatic pictures often tell a different story from what they are supposed to project. For example a photograph of a person laughing may be captured at a point where it looks like the subject is crying.

such photos can almost be taken by anyone who can click a camera and this is because of the sophisticated equipment available.

Sometimes, the photojournalist is not able to capture that momentous picture and, in case it does not meet the threshold Photoshop comes in handy to achieved desired results.

Editors, photographers and graphic designers operate with all sorts of applications with the attendant risk of projecting the journalist involved unfavourably.

Media houses have spent huge sums of money training their graphics teams, purchased very sophisticated machinery to achieve the desired results, but in some cases neglected ethical concerns in the operations.

A good question one might ask: ‘What is wrong with wanting to publish an image that looks sharp and detailed, one that was not manipulated as much?’

Manipulation of images, by practice, needs to be disclosed and discussed with the editorial and production teams. In this case, a clear line needs to be drawn on what is right and what is wrong. Does the effect introduce changes and thus the overall meaning of the image? Does it introduce anything foreign? What would the reader read out of the subject?

Manipulation of pictures has been there since the advent of the camera.

Whether the viewers knew about it or not, a doctored photo distorts information from the original.

Therefore, if a raw image does not give the true reflection of nature, what would a manipulated one do?

There are fundamental aspects that have been taken up in the industry that include Ethics versus Aesthetics and Art versus Journalism. When something is ‘ethical,’ by definition it conforms to professional standards of conduct. These are moral principles or values that guide the industry.

As discussed earlier, the pictures we take do not make a perfectly objective recording of reality. They are just but an interpretation of reality and it’s proven that no camera would perfectly and accurately record nature to an undisputed level. Live coverage on videos get closer to that but, with some lapses of time to the seconds, they still find themselves in that classification.

Media Houses have always to walk the thin line of portraying the truth of events through the camera, so that the viewer gets the truth as much as possible. Images are no longer used as evidence before the court of law especially with the introduction of Photoshop and many other editing tools. This, therefore, implies that the media has to play a major role in guarding their reputation by controlling the way professional photographers work with their tools of trade.

Let’s not ignore deliberate set-ups or poses of subjects by desperate photographers. It’s been witnessed before that some photographers

Cropping a photograph of a political rally is nowadays considered abominable. Politicians take issue with this. Media houses are slowly by slowly becoming prisoners of politics. This has encouraged politicians to transport followers to their rallies around the country for that special photo of the day.

It is believed that it is a way of rallying unsteady voters to believe they have a strong following and therefore change their minds. To the photojournalist, is that creativity or just a picture? Remember,

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and cameramen request their subjects to enact the events. Some demonstrations that fiddled out before the professionals arrived have being re-ignited for the camera, some ending up being worse than before. This too falls under manipulation of the camera.

Even a photo that has not been distorted through the existing tools on computer may end up giving the wrong message. The photographers may not agree to this but it is a fact.

The angle and camera controls may send a distorted story to the viewer.

Take for instance, where people are hugging and the photo taken in short clips from the side. There exists a moment when the faces are right at each other and tightly close as to portray the subjects as kissing.

The two dimensional camera would not show the necessary levels for everything would be on one plane. The use of flash in shooting of faces may again introduce a red eye effect to the subject and the photographer needs to anticipate that, but some obviously don’t. If this is not distortion, what is?

The red eye on the subject may introduce other interpretation by the reader. It may insinuate that the person in question consumes some hard stuff and so on. A wide-angle lens would bring a scattered crowd to a small area and give a totally different perspective. All these are qualities that media houses must watch out for.

The ability to take a newsworthy picture no longer lies with a photojournalist. The emergence of convergence in the media has made it possible for a simple operator to take professional pictures; consuming each photo to suit the situation. In the past, photo re-touching took hours and high level skills. Nowadays, some computer software does it for you in a flash and there are many websites where learners get free tutorials. It is no longer a trade of a few but an art that every other person can participate in.

During an electioneering year, media houses seem to close their eyes to those fundamental details on the images they use. Manipulated images are published all the time with the intention to increase readership and sales. Even reputable organisations are not spared in this malaise.

Naturally, personnel in the media could be having their biases to some political camps. This is a reality 12

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although some would always dispute this. This is the reason why some images and stories would be defended even when they are clearly not conforming to written code of conduct. All sorts of excuses would be brought up to explain such a misrepresentation.

I did not see this, I did think so, and so on.

Detailed evaluation procedures need to be drawn and special attention made to other hidden implications. This is a fact and must be handled with a lot of care and, if possible, should be discussed amongst the key players in the newsroom. It is no longer the duty of the Photo Editor to start and end an evaluation process. This requires collective responsibility and constant revision of the parameters used. Also, it is not the duty of the photographer to decide what images they want used. Healthy debates and objective analysis are vital.

While many of these guidelines are used by media houses, the question is how much comes into play. Is it right to use images that distort the event or an individual? How many of the consumers out there understand photo manipulation and to what extent do they get mislead? It is easy to say no to some detail, but when these methods have been used for years, and increased sales, the question is not whether it is right, but what and where are the guidelines?

It is very important for media houses to open up their scope of analysis of the published material and ask themselves whether they have played a role in shaping the opinion positively or distorted information. Issues arising include whether it is safe to believe the photographs that we see every day?

Media owners must embrace all the ethics related matter across the board.

Those coming into the business must draw a lot of attention to that detail.

‘Most people haven’t noticed, but it’s getting more and more difficult to recognise reality in photographic journalism. Due to the intricate nature of the software employed, it has become almost impossible to note the distortions found in most media. Even fiction is seen as reality.

Media houses have a role to play and should provide photographers with strict guidelines on how to take and enhance their photographs. Magazines and other publications are not spared either and parameters must be put in place. As media houses also rely on the public to help them capture news, it is important to know and understand the ethical issues behind every component they use.

When one understands and believes that photography is not the correct interpretation of nature, then they would be careful on how that image affects the society. It is good to have a dramatic picture but it is even more important to understand the contents of a composition at that point of application and what message comes out. Yes, we want to make that extra coin, but at what cost?

Edward Mwasi is a Newspaper and Graphics Consultant.

The Harm Principle in the use of Surreptitious News Gathering Techniques

Journalists have been accused of applying unorthodox techniques as they pursue stories, mostly investigative pieces. PETER MWAURA explores this in reference to the Code of Conduct for the Practice of Journalism.

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he use of hidden cameras, secret voice recording and other James Bond 007-type techniques, has become common in investigative reporting in Kenya. However, the Code of Conduct for the Practice of Journalism in Kenya contains clauses that seem to rule out, except in exceptional circumstances, the use of such spying devices.

generally identify themselves and not obtain or seek to obtain information or pictures through misrepresentation or subterfuge. Subterfuge can be justified only in the public interest and only when material cannot be obtained by any other means.”

Article 3 states that journalists should present news

Article 12 also forbids journalists from recording interviews and telephone conversations without the person’s knowledge: “Except in justifiable cases, journalists should not tape or record anyone without the person’s knowledge. An exception may be made only if the recording is necessary to protect the journalist in a legal action or for some other compelling reason. In this context these standards also apply to electronic media.”

with integrity and decency. They should avoid “techniques that skew facts, distort reality, or sensationalize events”.

Journalists should use surreptitious news gathering techniques, including hidden cameras or microphones, only if there is no other way of obtaining stories of significant public importance, and if the technique is explained to the audience.

Article 7 also states that journalists have a professional obligation to protect confidential sources of information. But it is Article 8 that deals the biggest blow to the practice of espionage in journalism. “Journalists should

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Article 13 weighs in with the issue of privacy. The public’s right to know should be weighed against the privacy rights of people in the news, the article states. “Intrusion and inquiries into an individual’s private life without the person’s consent are not generally acceptable unless public interest is involved. Public interest should itself be legitimate and not merely prurient or morbid curiosity.

Things concerning a person’s home, family, religion, tribe, health, sexuality, personal life and private affairs are covered by the concept of privacy except where these impinges upon the public.”

Further, article 20 states that as a general rule the media should apply caution in the use of pictures and names and should avoid publication when there is a possibility of harming the persons concerned. This could be interpreted as the harm principle -articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty -- which holds that the actions of individuals should only be limited to prevent harm to other individuals.

Indeed, the Code, in its admonition

against journalistic subterfuge and trickery, seems to be concerned with the harm that such investigative methods can cause to their subjects.

It tries to balance the harm with public interest or the right of the public to be informed of important matters. Unfortunately, the Code does not define what public interest is and the interpretation is left to the investigative journalist and ultimately his editor.

The use of hidden techniques in newsgathering is also a matter of ethical standards. The Editors’ Code of Practice, the British equivalent of our Code of Conduct for the Practice of Journalism in Kenya, is a much more robust instrument which seeks to maintain the highest professional standards. The Editors’ Code of Practice sets the benchmark for those ethical standards, protecting both the rights of the individual and the public’s right to know.

Specifically on clandestine devices and subterfuge the Editors’ Code states: “The press must not seek to obtain or publish material acquired by using hidden cameras or clandestine

listening devices; or by intercepting private or mobile telephone calls, messages or emails; or by the unauthorised removal of documents, or photographs; or by accessing digitally-held private information without consent. Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge, including by agents or intermediaries, can generally be justified only in the public interest and then only when the material cannot be obtained by other means.”

What is clear from the emerging trend in Kenya is that subterfuge and misrepresentation is okay as long as one one can claim public interest.

But it would seem that without commitment to ethical standards there is a danger of going too far with these tools of deceit. A more cautious approach is required to ensure that there is a proper balance between the harm principle and the public interest.

Mr Peter Mwaura is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Communication and Journalism, Kenya Methodist University and a member of the Media Council of Kenya’s Complaints Commission.

A battery of cameramen focusing on capturing the best at a press conference.

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Has the CEO supplanted the Editor as the

EDITORIAL BOSS?

Questions over who calls the shots in media establishments not only in Kenya but the world over have gone unanswered. ROY GACHUHI looks at the Kenyan scenario.

stations under their roofs. This has given the businessmen inordinate power. She said she felt suffocated.

I opened the floor to her observations and was surprised about how many people agreed with her. The only people who had nothing to say about this were those who had no recollection of the era she was referring to. After the workshop, I took the first opportunity to share her sentiments, and those of her backers, with a senior editor at the Nation Media Group. He dismissed them out of hand. In his experience, he said, the CEO does not interfere with Editorial operations. In fact, this editor said, he is constantly inquiring about where all the good stories went. He wanted to read them in the group’s platforms, however hard they rubbed the corporate world or Government the wrong way.

As far as this editor was concerned, the scarcity of quality investigative stories in the mainstream media is due to the rise of what he called “Google journalism”. He said: “These young reporters are too lazy or are too inadequately trained to undertake hard work. For them, in research, if it isn’t in Google, it doesn’t exist.

Unfortunately, they comprise almost the entire editorial workforce.”

D

uring a media training workshop I conducted in Nairobi late last year, a participant made the following contribution: Over the last two decades or so, Kenya’s media establishment has evolved following a course in which the Editor-inChief has been buried and the Chief Executive Officer has gained the preimminent leadership role.

The Editor, she observed, is a journalist while the CEO is a businessman. As a result of this evolution, the mainstream media in Kenya has shifted from being a watchdog for the public – which the journalist champions – to being a corporate entity that is just interested in a healthy balance sheet – which is the businessman’s overriding concern.

This, she said, has resulted in the death of public-spirited journalism, especially investigative journalism because where the Editor saw a story about a corporate wrong-doer, the CEO sees an advertiser, a goose that lays the golden eggs. Such a goose must be protected at all costs, the public interest notwithstanding.

The physical size of Kenya’s newspaper has thus become bigger and bigger but in terms of quality journalism, it has become worse and worse. Eye-catching graphics cannot erase this fact, she insisted. Finally, to compound the problem of the death of editorial leadership is the phenomenon of cross-media ownership. Almost all the major media houses have newspapers, television and radio

So who is right, the consumer of the media’s offerings or the editor?

There is no doubt that during the formative years of Kenya’s media, the editor was king. Shortly after independence, the 27-year-old Hilary Ng’weno edited the Daily Nation and attained iconic status as the first African and youngest person to do so. He remains a legend during his lifetime, a man who studied science, not journalism, but who later mentored a whole generation of newsmen and women in his Stellascope Group publications years later.

One would have to do a lot of digging to find out who the Nation newspapers Managing Director was during Ng’weno’s time. Even the proestablishment East African Standard, a broadsheet at the time, was known by its hard-nosed Editor, Kenneth Ewart Bolton, and not by whoever was the business chief.

This pattern continued well into the 1980s. Henry Gathigira, who was

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give short shrift to the tradition of public watchdog should be given the fullest attention.

Do stories in fact get killed because they threaten advertising? Are there examples to back this charge? Any empirical study on the observations made by that workshop participant would doubtless make some fascinating reading.

Who is really in charge of the news churned from a studio? to Kenyan journalism what Peter Oloo Aringo was to politics during the Kanu era, was Editor-in-Chief at The Standard. His sycophancy to the Moi regime led Prof Peter Kareithi, once Kenya’s top-notch investigative reporter and news editor, to describe it as self-abuse.

Among other things, it is he who suggested in a 1983 editorial comment that the newly-constructed stadium at Nairobi West be called Nyayo National Stadium. No one had the nerve to contradict that suggestion and Nyayo it became and has since been.

But for whatever he was, it was Gathigira that The Standard readers knew, not even Tiny Rowland whose Lonrho Group owned the paper and who was not an infrequent visitor to Kenya.

George Githii, known as the stormy petrel of Kenyan journalism and who walked around the newsroom with a gun, edited the Daily Nation during the 1970s. Githii was at one time President Jomo Kenyatta’s private secretary before being released because hardly anybody in the President’s court could cope with his volatile temperament. As editor, he drove the Nation to its lowest moment since its foundation in 1959.

When JM Kariuki, the popular Member of Parliament for Nyandarua North was murdered and his body left for hyenas to eat in the thickets of Ngong Forest in March 1975, Githii blithely told Kenyans in a Nation page one splash that JM Kariuki was in Zambia. A parliamentary select committee found that he deliberately lied to Kenyans and was part and parcel of an official cover-up to the crime. Who was the Nation Managing Director during Githii’s time? Again, it would take quite a bit of research to find out.

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There have been other editors who personified their company’s editorial product. Joe Rodrigues, fiercely independent and professional to a fault, George Mbuguss, who rose from tea-boy to Editor and who could sniff a good story from many kilometres away and see round the bend, and Peter Mwaura, the scholarly pro with a sophisticated sense of humour, all had stints at the Nation and it is they that the public knew.

If you mentioned managing directors like Stan Denman and Stan Njagi who headed the company during those years, you would draw a blank.

Only employees and their business colleagues knew them.

This has since changed. Since Chief Executive Officer Wilfred Kiboro assumed a high profile role at the Nation Media Group and Editorial Director Wangethi Mwangi operated from the shadows, the public persona of the media became different.

Paul Melly at The Standard followed suit and so did Patrick Quarcoo at Radio Africa. Another high profile business personality with no journalism background is Royal Media’s chairman, SK Macharia, variously referred to as “media tycoon” or “prominent businessman”.

In Royal Media’s travails with the Communications Commission of Kenya regarding the switching off its transmitters in various parts of the country in February this year – something that directly impacts on the flow of information - it is instructive that the voice heard is that of the Managing Director, Mr Wachira Waruru, and not that of the Editor.

Yet, when all is said and done, it is not who between the Editor or the CEO is the public face of the media houses that matters. The charge that the boss is there to hold brief for his colleagues in the business world and

Finally, a word about “Google journalism”. I must say that when that senior Nation editor told me about it, I must say I immediately empathised with him. There has never existed a more shambolic election nomination process in Kenya’s 50-year history than what took place in 1988. The country then experimented with the queue voting method of picking its leaders and the result was a catastrophe.

The shortest queues nearly always won and there was only one arbitration authority – President Moi himself. Imagine an aggrieved candidate trying to reach the President in such of justice. How do you get him? Yet the country has just gone through a shambolic nominations process and hardly a word of reference was made to the 1988 debacle.

If those who the lessons of history are bound to repeat them, the nominations disaster is a classic example. Why did the media not delve into the happenings of 1988? Will it similarly forget what happened in January 2013? Is its memory that short?

The great issues that engage our journalism remain. Issues such as human rights and good governance, individual and national security, food self sufficiency, political stability, corruption, employment – all these and a myriad others are constantly in the national agenda. They are our profession’s raison d’être.

But the inability to comprehensively research stories because journalists are too lazy to go beyond Google, then that is nothing short of a professional tragedy. And if it might be accentuated by a systematic strategy to kill stories so that corporate entities can continue to reap profits without being disturbed, the public watchdog, as we have always known him, has breathed his last.

Roy Gachuhi writes for The Content House.

In modern-day Journalism The concept of editorial independence has a keen friendship with controversy in modern-day journalism. As MARK OLOO explains, the debate on editorial independence is not about to end soon.

W

hile many journalists have questioned the very existence of ‘independence’ itself, debate still rages on whether editorial decision-making can ever take place without internal or external influence.

Opinion also remains sharply divided on which between media houses’ commercial interests and editorial autonomy should come first, what with the tough business environment the media, especially in the third world, have to contend with.

In Kenya for instance, recent public revelation that media mogul Samuel Macharia was deeply embedded in the ongoing presidential campaigns came as a shocker to many media practitioners.

The biggest question was whether his position as a key member of Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) presidential candidate Raila Odinga’s campaign summit could affect the independence of his media empire — Royal Media Services to which Citizen TV and a host of radio stations belong.

It was Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, Vice-President

It is striking how often Kenyan and indeed most African journalists fail to live up to the high standards they often prescribe for everyone else in their respective societies.”

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and Raila’s running mate, who publicly announced to a packed rally at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park that Mr Macharia was a member of the CORD Summit and one of the premier’s biggest supporters. This sent tongues wagging. Macharia’s move turned into a hotbed of politics, with some quarters reading mischief in a decision by the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) to disable Royal Media masts and other broadcasting equipment of alleged breach of licensing requirements.

Politicians claimed CCK was ‘punishing’ Macharia because of his political affiliation.

If it were in the US and even Europe where democracy is at its apex, Macharia’s involvement in politics would not have been a surprise because it routine for media houses to take sides during presidential elections or on various issues of top national concern.

Here at home, Macharia’s bold but surprise move has set a precedence and sparked debate over editorial independence in media houses. For many years, Kenya’s media houses have tried to portray a neutral face, even though some senior editors and writers have openly flirted with certain powerful politicians and big companies.

As Kenyans count the remaining days to a General Election billed to be the largest and the most complex, the media is on sharp focus. Will the newsrooms remain independent or will they take sides?

It is not lost to keen media monitors that all the three main political contenders — Raila Odinga (CORD), Uhuru Kenyatta (Jubilee) and Musalia Mudavadi (Amani) have set aside millions of shillings for publicity purposes. A spindoctor in one of the alliances is said to be giving his bosses a media budget of Ksh 300,000 per week. He says he uses the money on editors and writers. So where does this money go and can it influence the editorial independence of the mainstream media houses?

Veteran media trainer and former Daily Nation Managing Editor Joe Kadhi says it not unusual for journalists and editors in Africa to get caught up in ethical dilemmas during elections. In one of his many media presentations, Kadhi says local media houses cannot totally exercise editorial independence, especially during elections. That the media faces immense challenges is in no doubt and with rather shaky finances and low salaries, many news organisations are left vulnerable to intimidation and corruption.

“There are many ethics related scandals involving top journalists in English speaking African countries that one hears about all the time but never reads about in the papers”, he says in one of his papers — Anglophone Africa: Journalists puppets of the proprietors?

He adds: “The range of ethical problems encountered by media reporters in most of these

A media monitoring brief by the Media Council of Kenya at a Nairobi hotel.

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Anglophone Africa seems to have succeeded in making puppets out of their editors.

They seem to have also succeeded in commanding total control of their newspapers,” countries is somewhat startling.

They include conflicts of interest, freebies, junkets, intellectual theft, deception, carelessness, kowtowing to advertisers and politicians, use of dubious evidence and outright bias.” Kadhi goes on: “It is striking how often Kenyan and indeed most African journalists fail to live up to the high standards they often prescribe for everyone else in their respective societies.”

Like other senior editors interviewed for this article but who requested anonymity for fear of sparking a backlash from colleagues, Kadhi says that for a newspaper, TV or radio station to be really independent, it has to be free from governmental, commercial and proprietorial interference in editorial decision making.

“Anglophone Africa seems to have succeeded in making puppets out of their editors. They seem to have also succeeded in commanding total control of their newspapers,” he says.

He explains: “Invariably, newspaper owners in the region have been men and women of great wealth but no talent to produce newspapers; and editors have been men and women of great journalistic talent but not enough wealth to produce newspapers. Kenya and other English speaking countries of Africa have seen a few men and women of talent start their own newspapers and succeed. Most of them seem to find it difficult to survive on the market.”

Although the four main newspapers — The Daily Nation, The Standard, The Star and The People Daily normally appear to be operating independently from ownership influence, sources in these newsrooms admit it has been hard to maintain editorial independence because various editors have their own political biases. “The reason the presidential candidates have hired media consultants and set aside millions of shillings towards this cause is to influence the new coverage and opinion pieces to their favour. The consultants are supposed to ensure the coverage is tilted towards their man”, says Martin Kioko, a reader and a blogger on political issues.

Although the mainstream media houses have put stringent ethical rules for their staff to help maintain a semblance of editorial independence, some journalists and editors still twist stories to suit certain candidates. The Standard and The Daily Nation have often carried disclaimers, saying their media houses are neutral in the on-going presidential campaigns. But some editors also kill certain stories, which they fear may annoy their employers.

“Once you know that the owner of a media house is supporting a particular candidate, writing or airing a negative story about such a person would be suicidal. This applies to major corporate firms which pay millions in advertisements,” says a journalist with a local TV station, who requested for anonymity. He adds: “In most cases you have to use your common sense once you know your paymaster or editor is a friend to the politician you want to profile.”

Although there have been cases of newsroom interference, all has not been lost as the mainstream media houses have tried to expose the rot

in society by exposing those involved in drug trafficking and other corrupt deals. Veteran journalist Okech Kendo believes editors have to judge stories on the basis of the news values in them without having to compromise the ethical requirements to accommodate interest other than that of the public. “The rules are there to be followed and professional ethics should never be secondary. Planted stories must never be tolerated by any responsible editor, especially now that we are heading to the elections”, Kendo, a managing editor at The Standard, says.

Freedom House, an international Non-Governmental Organisation that

Journalists at work. conducts research on democracy, human rights and media censorship, says Kenyan media has tried to operate independency despite some degree of interference from interested parties. In its 2012 report on Kenya, the USA-based organisation says: “Kenya’s leading media outlets, especially in the print sector, are often critical of politicians and government actions. They remain pluralistic, rigorous, and bold in their reporting, although they also frequently pander to the interests of major advertisers.”

It adds: “There has been a significant expansion of FM radio, particularly ethnic stations, and their call-in shows have fostered increasing public participation as well as commentary

that is unfavorable to the government.

However, community broadcasting is underdeveloped.”

It is, however, worth noting that although some of these FM stations are critical of the Government, they have always addressed the interests of their owners. The watchdog says the use of bribery by political actors to influence news coverage remains a concern, as does the allocation or withdrawal of advertising to control content.

The NGO says the extra-judicial threats and attacks against the media by state and non state actors is a threat to media independence but adds that the local media has defied this and produced or published some investigative pieces.

But as the election fever hots up, it will be important for the media houses to stick to their editorial policies of fair coverage.

According to Kadhi, editors in Africa very often solemnly declare that the owners of their publications allowed editorial freedom and would not fiddle with the news. But in what is likely to spark debate, he says: “I knew that their owners didn’t really mean it when they talked of editorial independence. Probably when newspaper owners talk of editorial independence they mean something different to what editors think of those words. Editors at the various workshops verified that owners were to their publications what generals are to armies.”

The onus is on journalists and editors, with media scholars saying newspapers, commercial and community broadcasters, bloggers and online news services should rise above parochial interests to represent a driving force in Kenya’s transition to a more open political system.

Mark Oloo works for the Standard newspaper.

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Why the Media Must Help set the Agenda in this Election Kenyan media outlets have borne the brunt of somewhat ungrateful public. ERIC NYAKAGWA implores the media to play its rightful role as a way of winning public confidence.

“T

he Press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.” Bernard Cohen (1963) The media in Kenya media has long been accused of concentrating on covering personalities and events at

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the expense of playing the critical role of setting the agenda for the nation and its leadership. However, this accusation may not be entirely true, as the media has on many occasions been the champion of some of the momentous achievements the country has witnessed, especially in the last 30 or so years. But more often than not, it has been the exception rather that the norm.

Critics aver there has been minimal investment in investigative and specialised journalism in majority of the newsrooms leaving the media at the mercy of politicians, their hatchet men and public relations practitioners, to decide what goes into the next day’s newspaper or prime time news on radio and television.

The need for the Kenyan media

Moderators Linus Kaikai and Julie Gichuru, who oversaw the first debate, may not have measured to their US counterparts, but by confronting issues that may as well define this election such as ICC and ethnicity; they set the agenda for further debate on these issues in a more sober way.

In the end, it is the voters who will decide how the debate affects their choice come March 4. But the media played its role in a more robust way than the one-sided coverage we get from the campaign trail.

A news reader at a Narok-based radio station.

to give impetus to agenda setting has been made even more urgent by the evolving constitutional dispensation. While implementation of the Constitution has been ongoing and the media has strived to keep Kenyans abreast of what is happening and raising the red flag when those mandated to do appear to be slowing down or manipulating the process, the greatest challenge now is posed by the upcoming, historic, March 4 General Election.

How the media covers the election campaigns and the management of the electoral process will largely determine whether Kenyans will surmount the challenges posed by the biggest election ever. For the first time, Kenyans will go to the ballot to elect six sets of leaders following the reintroduction of the Senate and coming into being of county governments.

While traditionally, Kenyans have been voting for the president, Member of Parliament and Councillor (now ward representative), this time, they will in addition, chose the governor, senator and women representative all on one day. Without proper civic education, there is likely to be confusion at the polling stations and instead of the average 10 minutes one voter is expected to spend in the ballot box, this may go up to 20 minutes hence creating unnecessary delays.

While the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has embarked on civic education, the media should play a major role by complementing these efforts.

In addition, whether voters cast their ballot depending on one’s ethnicity or his or her agenda for the next five years will largely depend on how the media cover the campaigns in the lead up to March 4.

Already, the industry deserves accolades for organising two presidential debates, the first of which took place on February 11, where candidates faced a live audience to answer questions regarding their positions on various issues ranging from ethnicity, the International Criminal Court cases facing two leading aspirants, corruption, the huge salaries for top state officers to their blueprints for social and economic growth, education and healthcare.

Though largely borrowed from the American experience, the event at the Brookhouse International School was epoch-making and has set the stage for evolution of issue-based rather than personality or ethnic-based politics in the years to come.

What is needed of the media and other entities that would in future be involved in such debates is to refine the set of issues so that only those that rank high in a candidate’s agenda and critical issues of the day are given prominence.

The forthcoming elections also come at a time when the country is on the edge over the possible recurrence of the violence witnessed after the disputed 2007 presidential vote count. While presidential contenders have pledged to accept defeat and follow the judicial process in case of any disputes, the media can play a major role by pursuing a peace agenda and avoiding reportage that can fan tensions and result in violent conflicts.

The security agents, to be deployed across the country, can also benefit heavily from early warning messages from the media with regard to what happens in various hotspots.

In 2008, the media came together to call for an end to the bloodletting going on in various parts of the country.

For the first time, newspapers dropped their competitive policies to run a similar headline, “Save our Country”, and there are those who say it went a long way in boosting the efforts that were underway to end the violence and find a political solution to the crisis that had claimed over 1,300 people, displaced and maimed thousands of others, stalled the economy and led to widespread destruction of property.

This time round, it is incumbent upon the media to be more proactive so as not to have to deal with the adverse consequences of another postelection crisis.

Eric Nyakagwa is the Political Editor at The People newspaper.

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nominations was not entirely unexpected. We have a long history of political parties that are singularly unsuited to organising anything with even the minimum level of efficiency and integrity.”

Nation Columnist Mutuma Mathiu penned an opinion piece titled: “If how we conducted primaries is how we’ll hold elections, God save Kenya”. Mathiu wondered how parties expected to deliver in a day what takes the electoral commission months of planning and billions of shillings. “The parties believed their own delusions of adequacy and thought that they had the mechanisms to carry out a nationwide election and have a credible result in a couple of hours”, postulated Mathiu.

Lessons for Politicians from Primaries Coverage It was all systems go as the country’s major political groupings conducted their primaries.

As CALEB ATEMI reports, the coverage of the primaries provided critical learning points.

F

ormer Unites States army general and 34th President Dwight D. Eisenhower would have smiled with pleasure and satisfaction during the recent political party primaries in Kenya.

Had this military genius observed the precision and efficiency the Kenyan media employed in covering the party primaries; he would have unleashed one of his memorable quotes. Eisenhower would have opined: “Neither a wise nor a brave man lies on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run him over.”

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The media, in their splendid coverage of the party primaries on January 17 and 18, confirmed that politicians, in their wisdom, have continuously placed their anatomies on the historical rails of time to be smashed by the failure or refusal to imbibe from experience.

The Daily Nation editorial of Friday, January 18 titled; “Party nominations were a total debacle” vividly captured the weaknesses within the political party system: “The confusion and disorganisation witnessed at the ongoing party

In the Sunday Nation of January 20, Francis ole Kaparo, the Chairman of the United Republican Party attempted to explain the debacle: Kaparo blames poll chaos on ‘difficult’ law. Kaparo said: “We have had a very difficult law. The law must be facilitative not punishing the electorate and aspirants….Many regulations do not facilitate the electoral process. They hinder and make it prohibitive. We have had sleepless nights because of these laws. The current regime of laws will deny many Kenyans an opportunity to vote. And I don’t think this is democracy.”

It is clear that political parties have many lessons to learn from the media. The media glimpse on how they intend to cover the March 4 General Election.

The Royal Media Services deployed all its troops. From the ground to the air, Citizen TV gave a detailed account of the disturbances, confusion and excitement that characterised the primaries. TV journalist Mr Alex Chamwada captured as many polling stations countrywide as the helicopter could fly him to. It took plenty of planning, rehearsals and resources to execute the kind of coverage the Royal Media Services and its multiple radios displayed.

Ms Njeri Rugene, the Nation Media Group’s Parliamentary Editor said

The media brought to the fore cases such as lawlessness during campaigns and party nominations.

Photo/George Mulala.

it took weeks of planning and strategising to successfully cover the primaries: “It meant deploying a network of reporters, sensitising them to report on all our platforms, putting in place supporting logistics like phones, and encouraging reporters to verify reports from sources.”

At the Standard Group, the sleepless nights bore fruits. “The bulk of the work and planning was done by our dedicated news desk team. Early planning and team work have been the two key words that we have applied,” said Mr Andy Kagwa, the Group’s Production Editor.

KTN stationed staff countrywide.

Mr Emmanuel Talam, the KTN Deputy Managing Editor, said that: “Despite not having a chopper like the competition, Citizen TV, our efforts and success is proof that with advance planning it can be done.

Machines won’t think for you, it is up to the newsroom to adequately plan”.

Mr. Maina Muiruri, the Managing Editor of The People said the Mediamax Group employed strategy, serious planning and team work. The group set up its Elections Desk a month ago. The desk managed The People, K24 television and Kameme Radio. Correspondents were in every county.

“The desk was facilitated with a budget catering for all logistical

expenses. Operations for other desks were reduced to a minimum.

Staffs were borrowed to beef up the Elections Desk. Contingency plans were made for editors, reporters and designers to work on a 24- hour shift. This was our dress rehearsal for the General Election. We briefed all the teams to provide fair and balanced coverage of all the party nominations”, said Maina.

Meanwhile, as the media displayed organisational and managerial skills, they narrated the confusion within the political parties. Some of their headlines vividly captured the scenario: Eye on poll hotspots; shouted the Standard on Thursday, January 17. In its inner pages it cried: “Chaos rocks Kisumu as officer shot by gunman”.

On Saturday, January 19, The Standard stated: “Winners, losers on day of controversy’’ while on Sunday, it read: “How the battle is shaping up”. Perhaps the Daily Nation of January 19 had a most intriguing headline: “A lesson in vote chaos”. The splash captured the sorry state of confusion, anger and frustration that was the countrywide party primaries. The inside pages of Sunday Nation read: “Big names fall by wayside in chaotic party primaries rocked by delays and violence and confusion and anger as voters kept waiting”.

Despite not having a chopper like the competition, Citizen TV, our efforts and success is proof that with advance planning it can be done.

Machines won’t think for you, it is up to the newsroom to adequately plan It is clear speaking to journalists and editors that Kenyans should expect great, balanced and people powered coverage of the March 4 General Election. The editors must have internalised Collin Powel’s wisdom when he said: “There is no secret to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”

Caleb Atemi is a veteran journalist and currently a media trainer at Internews.

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The Shrinking Space

for Journalists in Kenya As the body charged with ensuring the protection of the rights and privileges of journalists in the performance of their duties, the Media Council of Kenya has initiated programmes to address rising cases of intimidation of journalists. Media Council of Kenya’s VICTOR BWIRE reports.

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number of journalists have recently been harassed and their equipment confiscated either by State agencies or hired goons, while some media houses have been intimidated against covering particular individuals. In some instances, some journalists have been forced to flee their work places. Robert Wanyonyi, Osinde Obare Paul Gitau (The Standard), Walter Barasa, David Wainaina (Mediamax), Mathews Ndanyi (Radio Africa Group), Suleiman Mbatia (Nation) and Vincent Musundi (Royal Media Services), and Joel Eshikumu to name just a few, have experienced nasty altercations from criminal goons, political activists or security agencies.

A practical training session on safety and protection of journalists conducted by the Media Council of Kenya in Naivasha.

the right to life (Article 4) establishes an absolute prohibition of torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment (Article 5), guarantees the right to liberty and security of the person (Article 6), and freedom of expression (Article 9).

The Media Council of Kenya has initiated several interventions including meetings with media owners, senior editors and countrywide trainings on safety and protection of journalists.

Through the initiative, we held our first meeting with media houses on September 12.

The MCK has proposed a number of measures to address this issue.

During the political party primaries in January this year, security agencies critically injured two journalists attached to the Daily Nation while The National Party Alliance (TNA) attacked Royal Media Services reporters in Nairobi.

Safety and protection of journalists is now a major concern. Since November 2012, the Media Council of Kenya has received about 30 cases of harassment, intimidation and violent attacks of journalists. Until now, none of the cases has been fully investigated nor perpetrators prosecuted. In addition to physical threats and attacks against journalists, some cases are reported where the Judiciary has handed heavy fines against journalists over defamation. Some media houses have even failed to respond to court sermons and ignored the plight of their journalists.

This sad state of the safety and security of journalists was corroborated further by the Status of the Media in Kenya 2009-2011 report findings launched in September 2012. It is scary that if something is not done urgently, harassment of journalists will become the norm and lead to self-censorship and eventually thwart media freedom and freedom of expression.

With the March 4 elections beckoning, cases of party activists, hired goons, informal religious groups, politicians and business barons and communities in various parts of the country are targeting journalists perceived not to represent their interests well in the media. Some areas are a no-go zone for certain media, simply because people are not happy with the ownership

of such stations. The geographical zoning is a dangerous trend for media freedom and freedom of expression.

As the statutory body entrusted with the mandate to protect journalists and promote their rights through the Media Act 2007, the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) is concerned about increasing cases of attacks and intimidation of journalists. Harassment of journalists is a violation of the Constitution and international treaties Kenya is party to.

The law guarantees press freedom and access to information.

The Constitution also provides for the safety and security of all Kenyans and the protection of freedom of expression via ARTICLE 34.

The UNESCO Resolution 29 adopted in 1997 dubbed, “Condemnation of violence against journalists� urges authorities of States to discharge their duty of preventing, investigating and punishing such crimes and remedying their consequences; and it urges member states to refine their legislation to make it possible to prosecute and sentence those who instigate the assassination of persons exercising the right to freedom of expression.

UN Security Council Resolution 1738 (2006) condemns attacks against journalists in conflict situations and recalled that journalists engaged in dangerous missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered civilians, and protected as such.

The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights guarantees individuals against arbitrary deprivation of

The Council is carrying out a baseline survey to map out the types of restrictions, attacks, harassment, and intimidation of media workers as well as the creation of awareness of the problem amongst different constituents. The Council is undertaking a study on working conditions of journalists including remuneration to establish how it relates to safety and security of journalists among others.

The Council is also urging media houses to take safety and security of journalists more seriously including provision of life insurance cover, provision of protective gears, counselling journalists who have covered traumatising cases as well as adopting actionable approach to dealing with the plight of journalists.

Other ongoing efforts include training of journalists on their role and personal responsibility on safety and security as well as sensitising individual journalists and media houses to raise awareness and heighten the issues of safety crises including identifying and shaming the culprits.

The Council is also reaching out to other players on security including the police, the Director of Public Prosecutions, political parties and Judiciary among others.

With the cooperation of media houses, the Council has envisioned establishing a common fund to deal with issues of safety and security.

Victor Bwire is the Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Programmes Manager at the Media Council of Kenya.

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Are Women Candidates Covered Differently?

The electioneering period is here and female candidates are up in arms over what they claim is unfavourable coverage compared to their male competitors. JANE THUO examines the grievances

Narc-Kenya presidential candidate Martha Karua at a campaign rally.

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ebate over how media covers women always elicits passion and emotions with accusations that media discriminates against women. On the other hand, media is always quick to defend their position and enumerates a long list as to why women receive the kind of coverage they get. These debates notwithstanding, media coverage of women generally has always raised concern not only on the local scene but also internationally.

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The topic has become subject of research and scholarly works trying to determine whether there are gender differences in the way media covers women and men. Narrowing down to politics, the concern is heightened by the fact that the manner and style of coverage have a direct and indirect bearing of who become players in the political scene given the mediated nature of politics. Immediate former United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton once

famously said, “There cannot be true democracy unless women’s voices are heard. Media still write of the ‘pastel hues’ in women leaders’ wardrobes even when they are talking about defence policy making women suffer from the glass ceiling in politics”.

A question that has always baffled women candidates is why they appear not to make it to the news headline. A major concern raised in forums recently organised by

According to the Global Media Monitoring Project’s (GMMP) report for 2010 from a research commissioned by World Association of Christian Communicators (WACC) documenting how media portrays women in 78 countries worldwide, women’s visibility in news content is uniformly low across continents.

Supporters of the Restore and Build Kenya (RBK) presidential candidate James ole Kiyiapi.

the Association of Media Women in Kenya for women candidates on how to engage with the media, is what it takes for one to get media coverage. A common misconception among the women candidates is that they are probably supposed to pay or ‘induce’ journalists so that their stories are carried in the local dailies or on broadcast media. There is a general fear that media has the ‘make or destroy’ a politician effect and for the women candidates, they would rather play it safe by shunning media coverage if they are not assured that it would be positive. Of course several instances are given of politicians including male whose political careers have been destroyed by the apparent negative media coverage.

For the women politicians, they feel that media is even more harsh to women compared to men in instances when the woman politician is involved in a scandal or controversy.

Such coverage, it is said destroys their private lives and families and given the kind of high pedestal and

cultural expectations that society places on women, then the impact in their lives is enormous and hard to withstand.

Of course all these concerns and fears cannot be dismissed because there is a history. Feminists and gender proponents have postulated that the media portray a stereotypical image of female candidates, a trend that has had negative consequences not only in the campaigns but also at the polls. The media has been said to focus on trivial issues about the women candidates such as highlighting their marital status, their birth and marital homes in relation to whether they should contest in areas where they are born or where they are married, whether their candidacy and participation in politics has received support by their family and community. These issues are raised just because of their gender more than capability. Other concerns that have been raised are that the media generally gives low visibility to women.

The report indicated that; only 13 percent of all stories (politics, government, economy) focused on women; only 24 percent of the people heard or read about in print, radio and television news were female.; only 6 percent of stories highlighted issues of gender equality or inequality; more than 46 percent of the total stories reinforced gender stereotypes, with higher proportions on peace (64%), development (59%), war (56%) and genderbased violence (56%) relying on gender stereotypes; more than 80 percent of the “experts” interviewed were men; and that only 10 percent of the stories quoted or referred to relevant local, national, regional or international legal instruments on gender equality and/or human rights.

The GMMP’s figures show an unbalanced picture of the world with women absent from community, economy, politics and media professions. GMMP concludes that these figures serve as a “reminder that in the ‘mirror of the world’ depicted by the news media, the faces seen and the voices heard remain overwhelmingly those of men.” With the increasing number of women participating in politics and ascending to political positions in Kenya, the concern on the role of media in ensuring that women candidates receive visibility cannot be swept under the rug.

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Why Should Media Cover Women Candidates?

The use of media has been highlighted as one of the important tool towards achieving political leadership world over. In order to wage successful campaigns, candidates need to garner favourable news coverage for their chosen messages.

Media coverage of candidates influences voters’ views of the candidates in numerous ways, including recognition of the candidates, assessments of the candidates’ personality, views of the candidates’ messages, as well as overall evaluations of the competing contestants. The strength of these media-performative criteria are often such as to disqualify certain candidates either from becoming public political figures at all or at least from competing for high office.

Consequently, gender biases disseminated by the media are significant because they have electoral consequences. It is public knowledge that media is an agenda-setting tool and that the media selectively determine an agenda for what’s news. By selecting, excluding, emphasising and elaborating certain aspects of the news, public opinions are inevitably shaped and influenced.

This may arguably be the case when it comes to media covering content on women politicians- that the media are setting their agenda on the women candidates and perhaps could be influenced by the already preconceived notions of the role of the woman as a mother and carer and not a political activist.

Instead of acting as mere mirrors of the social and cultural traditional patterns, the media should become an agent of change through their approach to women or rather to gender at large.

Bridging the Gap Editors and journalists cite their frustrations when trying to cover women candidates.

A factor that contributes to the low coverage is that the women candidates are often inaccessible, hostile and suspicious of media and this only makes the situation worse. “We do 28

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Peace (64%) Development (59%) War (56%) Gender-based violence (56%)

Very little concern, if any, is raised on the gender imbalance and neutrality even in media coverage. not practice affirmative action when it comes to news making in politics.

Women candidates should come out of their cocoons and stop thinking that they are entitled to media coverage just because they are women. They must also seek coverage by for example commenting on topical public issues in a manner that make news.” This comment by senior political reporter illustrates the frustrations. All said and done, media has a critical role to ensure that there is gender balance in their coverage of political players.

Media actors wield power because they determine who gets covered, who gets to speak in the news and in what capacities. Although the mass media are generally perceived as the epitome of modern day public sphere, it allows the so-called public only a limited role in deciding what should take place on its platform. Who the editors select to partake in the news process either as subjects or sources, is therefore, of critical concern as it says crucially important things about who counts in society, whose voices have legitimacy and status.

Studies on effects on media content that is, news and the construction of realities by the media indicate that where, repeatedly, the news covers women in less significant roles and treats them with relatively less prominence than men, is it possible that the audiences, including women themselves, would internalise such portrayals and limit their expectations of women’s relevance and abilities.

Media having been at the fore front in pushing for democracy, rule of law, respect of human rights, including the marginalised and minority should not therefore wish away gender balanced reporting including that of women candidates. The rights of the media are most frequently cited when talking about freedom of opinion and expression. Discussions focus disproportionately on freedom of the press, the rights of journalists and the suppression of independent media.

Very little concern, if any, is raised on the gender imbalance and neutrality even in media coverage. The media runs the danger of becoming a threat to these freedoms if no space and access for women’s freedom of expression and opinion as well as space to a wide majority of the population who are not in positions of power or formal authority. On the other hand, the women candidates have a responsibility as public figures to open up to media.

As the March 2013 elections near, it is not late for the women candidates to ensure that they are accessible and are working towards enhancing their relations with the media. In addition, they should have media strategies as part of their campaign strategies and where possible invest in hiring media experts to advise them on how to engage with the media.

Jane Thuo is the Executive Director of the Association of Media Women in Kenya.

GENDER

representation in the MEDIA Gender debate continues gaining eminence in the media. MARTHA MBUGGUSS provides an in-depth analysis of gender, power struggles and the media.

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he Collins Dictionary definition of the word “gender” is simple and straight forward, that is; it is a noun that stands for sex; male or female. The simplicity of the word ends at its definition in that the word has, over the years achieved a life of its own. Its mention sometimes raises tempers and temperatures as well as full blown exchange of nasty words between men and women. Moreover, the term is perceived, wrongly of course, to refer to women and women interests.

Gender debate continues to gain prominence thanks to media coverage. The media especially the mass media are largely entrusted with the roles of informing, educating and entertaining society. The apportioning of the said roles is debatable in the contemporary society. Some people feel that the media have specialized in the art of the absurdity.

In his write-up on communication perspective of culture, Martin-Barbero Jesus (1987) for example discusses media that is deprived of any cultural depth or institutional structure which makes the media mere tools of ideological action; that is media that exists to serve the interests of whoever is dominating it, maybe owner(s), and not the interest of the dominated, that is audience(s).

Ideology could in this regard be interpreted to mean “in the service of power.”

Ideological approach to media is a controversial and highly contested concept. It generally holds it that the popular culture perpetuated by the media has an ideological force that conceals, misrepresents and secures an order of domination. It further states that the concealment is in the interest of a particular ruling group, social formation or form of society.

As we engage in the debate of gender representation in the media we cannot ignore the ideological perspective, neither can we overlook a few critical factors that are likely to come to play. The factors include but are not limited to culture, social complexity of the contemporary social systems, the communicator’s gender and experience. Social complexity which has in particular become a major concern in the social sciences refers to society’s differentiation and segmentation into an expanding number of sub systems, each of which tends to increase in autonomy, and this has some consequences which influence and are influenced by public opinion.

Discussing social complexity and public opinion, Richeri, Giuseppe (1988) mentioned some of the complexity’s outcomes as loss of a common horizon of reference for the entire society or large segments of it. That is to say that the complexity leads to a scenario whereby it is impossible to have a common denominator that represents society as a whole.

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The complexity further leads to a weakening of the ties that bring social subgroups into relationship with universally shared and accepted norms which further enhances autonomy on the part of the subgroups. Richeri posits that such autonomy causes or calls for respect for a “a higher center of coordination,” such as the State.

This argument seems to hold water especially in Kenya today where the Government must of necessity address issues of gender, youth, people with disabilities, the marginalized groups among others.

Although autonomy caused by the complexity is not necessarily a bad thing, scholars see a need of reducing the complexity so that society can live together. According to a German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann (1978) the phenomenon of public opinion, given a forum, can be a basic complexity reducing mechanism. The media easily provides such a forum whereby topics of shared importance are selected, defined, attention to issues regulated and communication permitted among individuals. Besides individual and collective concerns and common problems are delved into.

The media is able to carry out the task through its process of producing, distributing and consuming information that is basic to shaping public opinion.

In order to test the arguments proposed above, i.e. whether there is an ideological bent to media text, and the type of complexity inherent in media representation, it is important to analyse media content with an open mind.

Such an analysis helps to determine the intention and characteristics of the communicators, detect the existence of latent propaganda or ideology, reflect cultural patterns of groups and determine whether the media have an ideological role that helps perpetuate and sustain unequal relationship of power and whether the content is challenging or reinforcing the relationship.

Discourses relating to power have to do with subsystems mentioned earlier, perhaps 30

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between men and women, between the social classes or ethnic groups.

While analyzing content in such regard, it is important also to think about the audience and whether they accept, reject or appropriate the ideas (Devereux, Eoin 2003).

An analysis of two newspaper stories appearing in the Sunday Nation, on January 27, 2013 that had some bearing on gender can give us a general idea of the kind of gender representation the media offers in Kenya. On page 15 is a story headed “Chaotic party nominations rob women of dreams and dignity.” And how is the women’s dignity robbed?

It is done in various ways. A sub heading on top of that story exposes one of the ways, that is through discrimination. The subheading reads: “Elders declare a win by female candidate in Kajiado a curse for the Maasai community.”

The story further reveals that elders who met in Sultan Hamud took issues with the “victory of a woman married in another district.” They went on to warn that they would curse whoever supports her.

Here then is an invocation of culture, superstition and gender related chauvinism used to create fear, and uncertainty geared to deny a woman political leadership. The question of the respective woman’s ability, talents or passion to serve the people do not arise at all. The Maasai culture is conveniently used and politicized to preserve power in men’s hands.

The Nation recounted what it described as various unorthodox tactics that were employed by male rivals against women aspirants which included actual rape of a woman aspirant in Embakasi, trailing and threatening of an aspirant in Nakuru town and use of armed gangs to force her to leave her home and forcing her to quit the race.

In the same locality, an outgoing male Member of Parliament was reported as having slapped a woman voter.

Other crude methods included printing the name of a woman candidate on condoms in Kandara.

The same candidate was accused of being an alien in the area in that she is married in the neighbouring Nyeri county.

The media are sometimes described as a mirror of society that shows people just who they are. The accounts narrated above show just how deep and “legalized” discrimination against women goes.

Some women for example were reported to have won the primaries had their reveals names forwarded to the IEBC by their parties as the people who had won instead. Some women aspirants’ agents were ejected from a polling stating during the party primaries.

In another story appearing on page 5, an aspirant in Komorock was reported to have been beaten not only by one of her opponents but

Female journalists are equally excelling in the profession like their male counterparts.

The reader may want to know how all this dressing relate to a debate on the media and media representation of gender and by extension media representation of culture. also by the police. She was injured, and attended the hearing of her case limping, with a swollen face and a sling on her hand.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Multiparty Democracy Ms. Njeri Kabeberi summarized the gender related political happenings very well when she said that parties were on a robbery spree against women.

On a lighter note and away from politics was another story on dressing appearing on page 3 on the same newspaper headed “What is in a dress? New grooming rules divide lawyers.” The story was a response to a new directive by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) on members’ dress code. Although the directive was meant to give guidelines on how all lawyers, that is male and female lawyers, the focus of the story is mainly on women lawyers and mostly focuses on the miniskirts. The picture chosen to illustrate the story is that of women lawyers, making the dress issue more of a female than a male issue. Remember that a picture is often equated to more than a thousand words.

Although the content briefly mentions the Chief Justice Willy Mutunga and his famous ear stud that had caused a furore during his vetting, the writer who is a man quickly switches back to women, miniskirts, blouses and shoes plus their recommended colours. His interviewees for the story are apparently women

One of the interviewees points out that a miniskirt or tight clothing (feminine) are bound to distract not just the judge but also other male lawyers. The presumption here is that the judge has to be a man, even in this dispensation of a gradually balanced bench. The second concern is on male lawyers while no mention is made on other women lawyers: Does a miniskirt worn by one of their colleagues have any effect on them?

In a response to the innuendo that women ‘should dress to protect men’, one of the interviewees “dismissed the directive as defeatist, saying that, instead of banning miniskirts men should be disciplined and practice self control.” One may wish push that argument further and propose that the judiciary employ only women judges.

Jokes aside and presuming that dress codes are important, there may be male dressing styles that should have been included in that article. Male dressing styles are also changing and some may cause attraction or revulsion to society generally and to females in particular. The list runs all the way from braids, dreadlocks, ear studs, sagging trousers, style, size and colour of beards to tattoos.

As demonstrated by some wouldbe youth mentors emerging in the political arena, dressing could include words fashioned in a man’s hairdo.

This is to say that the dressing style need not be one sided.

The reader may want to know how all this dressing relate to a debate on the media and media representation of gender and by extension media representation of culture. In his contribution to the debate, Webster Frank (2006) suggests that adornment of the body, clothing and make up have been important ways of signaling status, power and affiliation. They had meaning in the past centuries when they distinguished the industrial working class and peasants.

However, he argues, there has been an explosion of meaning in terms of dress, thanks to the emergence of TV and creation of an “information society” as a result of the new Information Communication Technologies. Too many signs have contributed to more information but

led to the collapse of meaning. “Signs come from so many directions and are so diverse, fast changing and contradictory that their power to signify is dimmed. Instead, they are chaotic and confusing.”

He adds that audiences are creative, self aware and reflective to the effect that all signs are greeted with skepticism and a quizzical eye. In that case, the intended meaning refracted. Signs therefore lose whatever reality they may have stood for and become part of some of the things the media is accused of such as media glitz or ‘hyper-reality.’ They help audiences to make their own meanings that suit them. How does all this help the audience?

Citing other scholars, Webster says that they help audiences to make their own meanings that suit them.

They then “revel in their artificiality, ‘playfully’ mixing different images to present no distinct meaning, but instead to derive ‘pleasure in parody or pastiche.” Pastiche means the work of art that mixes or copies styles and could very well describe what goes on in the fashion and behaviour in Kenya. Just because some famous football coach chews gum in front of camera, it becomes a craze for the young and the old. It took Kenyans just a few days of sighting some fellows known as the Atur brothers for men to begin wearing bling.

Webster quotes Poster, 1990, who states that in this information society, we have, a set of meanings which is communicated but which have no meaning.

The above sentiments may not be a very good way of ending a story since it could create a sense of helplessness and despair for media practitioners and their audiences.

But the truth of Webster’s arguments notwithstanding, I would propose for serious analysis and a more inclusive information gathering approach to issues of culture or respective culture under coverage, gender and the power struggles inherent in gender relationships.

Martha Mbugguss is a lecturer of Mass Communication at Africa Nazarene University and a member of the Editorial Board of the Media Observer magazine.

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Of Media Coverage, Ethnic Calculations & Electoral Choices

Jubilee Coalition presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta on the campaign trail in Meru. Photo/George Mulala..

The media has for a long time been seen as playing a key role in shaping politics, especially in swaying votes during elections. However, NSAMBA A MORRIS argues that media coverage neither reflects nor substantially influences electoral choices.

O

n March 4, Kenya will hold its first election under the 2010 Constitution. This election will be different from previous ones in that Kenyans will elect six leaders on the same day. It is also peculiar in that one of the political alliances is presenting persons facing crime charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The other interesting aspect is that there is no incumbent running for the presidency. The ICC cases have attracted more attention and

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framed how the media reports and covers political campaigns. Media monitoring reports by the Media Council of Kenya indicate radio stations rather than newspapers are more balanced in their coverage and airspace given to the presidential candidates.

The most frequently covered candidates by the Newspapers and TV are Raila Odinga, Uhuru Kenyatta, and Musalia Mudavadi respectively.

There are emerging perceptions

within sections of the population to suppose that media coverage is likely to influence electoral choices and outcomes especially the undecided voters. Despite, this is being a plausible argument it pays less attention to the cultural-political dynamics in Kenya.

I however, believe that media coverage is not a Key determinant of electoral choices. My argument is premised on simply but very realistic reasons.

First, sections of the electorate who buy and read the newspapers hardly trust the media as a source of objective political information. Most of them are aware of the political relationships between media houses and the individual presidential candidates. Second, sections of the electorate especially in the higher middle class clearly understand

this alliance affords Odinga a chance to eat into the Luhya vote. The other alliance member Wiper leader comes from the Kamba community. The Kamba are 10% of the population.

However, the leader of NARCKenya also comes from the Kamba community. The presence of Wiper leader in the Cord alliance is crucial in neutralising the effect of Jubilee alliance among the Kambas.

Safina party presidential candidate Paul Muite at a campaign rally in Kisii. that the primary motivation for the media in the current elections is short term profits not production of an informed voter. Third, those in rural areas have limited access to the mainstream media like the TV and newspaper. Fourth, compared to other East African Community states, Kenya has the largest percentage of the middle class. Whereas, this is good for the country in terms of economic development, when it comes to politics the manner in which this class behaves is sometime problematic. Fifth, political contests in Kenya are not primarily issue based. As such the role of information and information dissemination is not substantial. This is reflected by extent to which political players invest in media outcome and communication campaigns. Because political campaigns are not issue based politicians hardly invest much time and resources in information dissemination channels like the media. Most of the resources are invested in tangible effects that may influence voter choices.

But it is important also to note that for the first time the media has organised joint initiatives for example the presidential debates. As to whether such initiatives will have an impact on electoral outcomes it is yet to be seen. So what influences electoral choices? There are other considerations Kenyans take into account including but not limited to the ethnic identity of a candidate, opinion polls – for the undecided voters –policy proposals of the

candidates – for a small section of the electorate and personal gains and interests in the leadership of the candidates.

Political ethnic calculations According to the 2009 population census, the largest ethnic communities are the Kikuyu 17%, Luhya 14%, Kalenjin 13% and Luo and Kamba at 10% each.

In the run up to the nomination presidential aspirants sought to create alliances across and within ethnic communities. So what is the ethnic mathematics and does it matter at all? Each presidential candidate sought to create political capital and in the case of Cord it had to team up with the Wiper party and Ford-Kenya among others. To the Luo candidate –Raila Odinga – this alliance is very fundamental.

First, he comes from the fourth largest ethnic community as such Ford-Kenya leader comes with numerical advantage. The Ford-Kenya leader comes from the Luhya sub-ethnic community of the Bukusu. The Bukusu are the largest Luhya subethnic community.

In terms of political mathematics

The mathematics of the Jubilee alliance is interesting and reflects the extent to which electoral choices and outcomes are based on ethnic considerations. The National Alliance party and the United Republic Party are less than a year old yet they have garnered support within the country.

Its leaders should be credited for that but also we have to ask ourselves whether that support is because of their good political manifestos or because they have presented themselves as ethnic candidates?

The two leading individuals in the Jubilee alliance come from the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities.

Combined, these two communities are 30% of the population, the Jubilee alliance a huge edge.

But it is not as easy since within these communities are leading individuals in other alliances and equally important are the historical socio-cultural and socio-economic relationships between the two communities. There are similarities that URP and TNA share which may act to their advantage but also very much reflective of ODM politics in Nyanza. ODM has created political hegemony in Nyanza creating a perception in the region that once you have ODM nomination you have

Amani coalition presidential candidate Musalia Mudavadi on a vote-hunting mission.

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already won any political contest in the region. Other communities are equally trying to create as well as learn from that experience; as such TNA and URP want to create a political hegemony in central and rift valley provinces respectively. It is this thinking and desire to create a regional political hegemony similar to that of the ODM in Nyanza, the leaders of the Jubilee alliance argue will automatically lead to an electoral victory. However, the socio-cultural and socio-political dynamics in the regions are completely different from those of context of Nyanza. Whereas ODM has managed overtime to create political hegemony it may be difficult for the leading Jubilee alliance political parties to craft a similar hegemony.

it is difficult to get a bloc vote.

Even where you expect bloc voting the current political alliances have affected such voting patterns; Media coverage will hardly influence electoral choices and outcomes; -the media has failed to portray itself as a source of objective and creditable and non-partisan information. Sections of the electorate will vote individuals on the basis of their ethnic identity rather than policy proposals they put across In most of the literature and commentary it is argued that it is voters in the rural areas rather than the elites in the urban centres who will vote for individuals based on

two leading coalitions are Cord and Jubilee respectively. Jubilee alliance is championed by two ICC suspects.

In a society where electoral choices are based on issues you would not expect much support for anybody with any relationship whatsoever with ICC; yet in Kenya the reverse is true. This certainly tells us a lot about what people consider and look at in political leadership. It also tells us what makes sense to people in Kenya.

The media has done well by way of popularising the ICC cases to the extent that almost very Kenyan voter has had a chance to either read or listen to commentaries about the ICC. But this information has also helped the ICC suspects gain political capital. They have in some cases presented the cases as communal and are quick to present themselves as the sacrificial lamb for their communities.

Conclusion

The CORD team at a campaign rally in Embu.

Amani alliance is equally in the same ethnic mathematics and its leaders in the United Democratic Forum (UDF) are interested in creating a Luhya political hegemony. Amani and Jubilee share the same political mathematics. The Amani leader, coming from Luhyaland there is a perception that he can command a considerable amount of votes from the region. If his running mate can garner a considerable amount of votes in Central, the alliance should be able to win.

There are number of conclusions drawn from the analysis.

The first is that each and every political coalition has supporters across all ethnic communities in Kenya and that ethnic groups in Kenya are differentiated and therefore 34

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their ethnic identity. However, it is important to note that even in Urban centres like Nairobi, over 60 per cent of the population share almost the same characteristics with their rural folks. But does voting someone of you ethnic community improve your living conditions? The answer to this question is no and yes. But as human being there is always psychological comfort and sense of attachment that individuals get when they can ethnically identify with those in power. The tendency is to think of themselves as being part of the ruling class; Whereas the ICC has been and continues to be a key issue during the campaigns, it will not have a strong influence on how the largest section of the population votes.

According to the opinion polls the

Media coverage in any political contest is important, however to make sense the media has to be fashioned in manner able to offer objective and balanced opinion.

Where the media is unable to balance its short-term profit interests and its long term editorial policy and objective of informing the public, it is likely that it may not be trusted by the public. In Kenya, the structure of the media does not allow it to produce an informed voter or even influence political processes. It is mostly a market driven media, more responsive to demands rather than shaping opinion.

Socio-cultural rather than socioeconomic identities are strong and play a key role in people’s perceptions of identity. As such, political choices are also about someone’s sociocultural identity. This reflects a people’s perceptions of the state as an institution as well as state-society relations. The state as an institution has remained foreign and abstract to many Kenyans. The state is yet to manifest itself as a framework able to respond and manage claims and demands put onto it in a rational manner.

Nsamba A Morris is the acting Programmes Coordinator and Research Fellow at the African Research and Resource Forum.

Why Journalists Must Shun the ‘Brown Envelope’ in this Election As with other issues bedeviling the society, the media has not been spared the corruption bug. TOM OLANG’ persuades Kenyan media to keep off the vice at this crucial time.

I

n the early 1990s, yours truly was very passionate on pursuing a career in journalism. I admired the lofty role of the media: to inform, to educate, entertain, and, well, make money (it’s business, after all). I never quite got the chance to be a career journalist, but ended up being a freelance writer and media trainer two decades later. I have since realised Kenya is in dire need of responsible journalists. To respond to this gap, I opted for the lecture theatre as opposed to the newsroom.

There are hundreds of journalists in the country but responsible ones are countable.

The other day I posed a fundamental question to my students at the Technical University of Kenya, where I teach the basics of Writing and Editing

for Print Media: Why have you chosen to train as a media practitioner?

The answers were as varied as the students. Some said they wanted to be celebrities, some said they wanted to crusade for certain causes affecting society, some simply wanted to improve their communication skills to use in other trades, while a few seemed not quite sure why they were pursuing the course.

Then I digressed the lecture from the classical ‘Inverted Pyramid’ format of packaging ‘hard news’ to some of the challenges and malpractices in the field. At the end of the lesson, one student on internship with the Ministry of Information and Communications confided in me that he recently became victim (or is it beneficiary?) of the ‘Brown Envelope Syndrome’ while

covering a gubernatorial candidate at the Nyayo National Stadium. Being a struggling student who can hardly afford a square meal at lunchtime, he pocketed the kitu kidogo that candidate gave to the ‘ladies and gentlemen of the press’ from various media houses. Guilt was written all over his face as he experienced cognitive dissonance. The candidate’s aides reportedly hurdled the journalists into a room, told them to switch off the cameras and recorders, and dished out the infamous brown envelopes. My student said it was difficult to resist since ‘everybody was taking it.’ After all, it is elections time and a harvesting season for those in the media!

I have often told media trainees and those who aspire to join the industry that an ideal journalist is akin to Caesar’s wife: beyond reproach. To rise to the call of a media job calls for true sacrifice and a great sense of responsibility. If you need to pursue a career that is intellectually and morally fulfilling, then you can be a scribe.

But if your primary motivation is making ‘a quick buck,’ as it were, then the newsroom is the wrong place. It The Media Observer

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is unsettling that majority of newgeneration journalists join the media for prestige and other trappings that come with the job, but not out of a passion for championing a just cause affecting the downtrodden. The trade is wrought with challenges and full of masqueraders and cartels. Schools of journalism often teach theories but hardly prepare trainees for the challenges and intrigues in the field.

To make matters worse, corporate power, with all its attendant intrigues and evil machinations has deeply infiltrated the media, even taken it over. So much so that the so-called ‘independent media’ is a mere mirage not only in Africa, but even in the West, which is ostensibly the bedrock of democracy and other freedoms. In July 2011, journalist Janet Daley of the UK’s Sunday Telegraph declared that British political journalism is basically a club to which politicians and journalists both belong.’

She wrote: “It is this familiarity, this intimacy, this set of shared assumptions … which is the real corruptor of political life. The selflimiting spectrum of what can and cannot be said … the self-reinforcing cowardice which takes for granted that certain vested interests are too powerful to be worth confronting. All of these things are constant dangers in the political life of any democracy.”

There is a serious conflict of interest between the conduct of conventional journalism and the whims of media owners. The interests of the owner and the corporate class to which he belongs work against the critical functions of an ostensibly independent medium, especially in situations where the proprietor appoints editors in his own image – who impress their views on their staff. In this context, journalists could as well be ‘puppets of the proprietors,’ as Mr. Joe Kadhi would put it.

The Kenyan scenario is no different.

I have used Britain as a parallel because our media practice heavily borrows from its precursor, the English Press. Never mind the fact that we attained ‘independence from colonialism’ and started doing things ‘our own way.’ What’s that age-old adage again? Oh yes, “the forest may change, but the monkeys of old will remain the same!’ The locals that took over media management 36

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and ownership still bear the same inclination; vested interests.

Show me a media house or owner who has no political or quasi-political interests, and I will show you an independent medium. It is common knowledge that media personnel and politicians “hop into bed” at the slightest opportunity. It is actually a mismatch; a marriage of convenience.

The two are strange bedfellows at best. In an electioneering period like this, journalists have a field day laughing all the way to the bank, especially those who pen ‘hard news’ and commentaries on corporate and political issues.

In view of the foregoing, there are twin problems bedeviling the Kenyan media: poorly trained practitioners who lack morals and ignore or flout media ethics with impunity, and a corporate monster that has chosen to pocket the press. In the background lie the political elite who work in cahoots with the corporates to compromise the media. The Uchumi Supermarket’s collapse before its rescue by the Exchequer is a classic example of a case that could have been salvaged in time had the Press not chosen to look the other way. There were strong indicators at one point that the publicowned chain store was headed for the rocks, but since there were vested political and corporate interests, and a few palms allegedly greased, it was business as usual. The taxpayers had to bear the brunt of corruption as blame game continued unabated.

The culture of impunity is a vicious circle in Kenya, and much as the local Press attempts to grandstand as a whistle-blower, it has not been successful in keeping the powers that be in check and holding leaders to account.

Which media house could question the mismanagement of Uchumi, when it was a major advertiser? Woe unto you if you bite the hand that feeds you! Crusading journalists who attempted to poke their long noses into the Uchumi fiasco were promptly, albeit discreetly, warned to shut up or face the sack! Some key political players probably held huge stakes in the crumbling parastatal, but by the time the ark was sinking, they had swum ashore as they had intelligence information at their disposal.

The culture of impunity is a vicious circle in Kenya, and much as the local Press attempts to grandstand as a whistle-blower, it has not been successful in keeping the powers that be in check and holding leaders to account. The local media houses and practitioners appear to be reading from the same script as their ‘forefathers’-the English Press - who are actually corrupt and prone to political manipulation. Picture this scenario: The Guardian of Monday 11 July 2011 had a headline that screamed, ‘This media is corruptwe need a Hippocratic Oath for journalists.’ The Hippocratic Oath is meant to ensure medics remain true to the tenets of their profession.

In the article, the writer, George Mobit, opined: “Most national journalists are embedded, immersed in the society, beliefs and culture of the people they are meant to hold to account. They are fascinated by power struggles among the elite but have little interest in the conflict between the elite and those they dominate. They celebrate those with agency and ignore those without.”

Closer home, the recent political party primaries were a sham and media consumers may not know the blatant breach of democratic ideals and criminal activities not exposed by the media simply because money reportedly changed hands.

As members of the Fourth Estate, our primary calling is to hold those in power to account. But what’s the reality out there? Instead, most journalists simply serve the concerns of the elite.

I have interacted with journalists for two decades in various fora and part of what I have witnessed is what propelled me to opt for the classroom to produce scrupulous pressmen and

Kenya News Agency journalists interviewing the Media Council of Kenya CEO Mr Haron Mwangi. presswomen. Corruption is a cancer that has permeated every sector of the economy, including the media, which should know better. What then is corruption? Transparency International (TI), an anti-corruption watchdog, defines the terms as, “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” TI asserts that the malaise hurts everyone who depends on the integrity of people in a position of authority. In their pep talks, disgruntled journalists often recount the dirty deals of cartels in the media which hampers the prevalence of fair, accurate and unbiased reportage on matters of public interest. On one hand, there is a breed of journalists known as ‘ambulance chasers.’ This is often the poorly paid correspondent who pursues politicians like gadflies either to ‘pitch a story’ or ‘seek clarification’ when in actual fact they only seek cheap favours.

Some journalists even extort money from news sources and will threaten to ‘kill’ a story if they are not given ‘something.’ The unfortunate result is partisan reporting, withholding of crucial information, unsubstantiated news, and sheer sensationalism. Go to any political function and you will find many strangers masquerading as journalists; they do not even have legal accreditation provided by the Media Council of Kenya. Interesting incidents have occurred where even accredited reporters publicly disown the imposters when the contents of the ‘brown envelope’ are being shared.

The lesser the beneficiaries, the bigger the loot, and they slowly become the slaves and mouthpieces of the

paymaster. Consequently, accuracy and objectivity becomes a pipedream.

On the other hand, there are tycoons with political links who simply ‘buy’ the Press. Their reasoning is: ‘Why hire a lawyer when you can buy the judge?’ One memorable incident is when retired politician, Kenneth Matiba, once spilled the beans that he had bought a car for a senior editor in a leading daily so that the editor would act as a gatekeeper in his favour. Other senior editors reportedly do lucrative ‘consultancy’ for political parties, contrary to company policy.

Without naming names, a number of editors have ended their careers prematurely for such malpractices.

The vice is acute during the electioneering period. It was rampant during the 2007 General Election and the stakes are even higher this time.

This season has seen more senior journalists quitting the newsroom to work for presidential candidates as spokespersons or press secretaries. To paraphrase Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe, if you want to eat a toad, go for a fat and juicy one.

Although the law and convention requires that the media gives equal coverage to the presidential contenders, disparity abounds in coverage by various media houses or individual journalists. One month to the General Election, Restore and Build Kenya (RBK) presidential contender Prof James ole Kiyiapi lamented that the media kept giving his rallies a blackout. “The media have been the biggest let down for us because they do not cover our

campaigns. When they do, it is not with the same prominence given our competitors. It is sad that the media have taken sides,” The Standard quoted him as saying. Whether the skewed coverage was a result of ‘brown envelope’ or ‘ambulance chasing’ remains a question of conjecture.

Article 2 of the Code of Conduct for the Practice of Journalism in Kenya (Media Act, 2007) says in part that journalists should ‘determine news content solely through editorial judgment and not the result of outside influence.’ Again, the agendasetting role of the media strategically positions them to sway public opinion, for better or for worse. In the book, Media Debates: Great Issues for the Digital Age, media critics and scholars, John Merrill and Everette Dennis, argue that ‘heavy exposure for a candidate through positive news coverage and effective placement of advertising is deemed important in deciding who wins elections.

According to the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development, “The professional norm that journalists must not accept any gifts or other kinds of favours from political parties or candidates is a vital part of the responsibility and credibility imperative.” Thus, it is important during election coverage, when parties and candidates may be inclined to be particularly generous in the hope of favourable media exposure.

Corruption in the media during elections rears its ugly head in subtle ways. While journalists should not even accept transportation from parties or candidates, this is common practice. It is more ethical for journalists to travel together in a private vehicle and share the cost than be associated with any party or candidate. We even hear of disturbing talk of journalists who have a regular token from certain politicians. It should not be lost on media personnel that an election is more than just a major, intense, long-running news story. We are obliged to provide information and analysis, functioning as watchdogs and being a conduit for voters’ voices. If we must trade our integrity and the vox populi with a blood-stained ‘brown envelope,’ then we are in the wrong career and the sooner we quit the better!

Tom Olang’ is a freelance journalist and Mass Communication lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya.

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The Kenyan media practitioners have been castigated for breaching several articles in the Code of Conduct for the Practice of Journalism as spelt out in the Second Schedule of the Media Act 2007.

WELLINGTONE NYONGESA looks at three key issues that compromise journalistic standards.

WHAT IMPAIRS IMPARTIALITY IN THE KENYAN MEDIA DURING POLLS? 38

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t is election time yet again and journalism is undergoing another huge test. Following the ugly events of the last (2007) election and the repercussions thereof, journalists have been exercising caution save for a few instances of partiality picked out by audiences and independent observers.

This is because media was named by key commissions that investigated the Post-Election Violence as having played key roles in the last election and the aftermath. While the three key platforms: Print, Television and Radio were blamed for contravening their code of ethics and especially the principles of impartiality, independence and accuracy, Radio, especially vernacular stations were recommended for further investigations.

The Justice Philip Waki commission included one broadcaster among key perpetrators of the violence in Rift Valley – Kass FM Joshua arap Sang, one of four Kenyans with a case to answer at The International Criminal Court ICC. That is, to say the least, an indictment of the entire profession. Media, therefore, joined other indicted professions, which are politics (William Ruto, Uhuru Kenyatta, and Henry Kosgey) and Security (Mohamed Hussein Ali and Francis Muthaura by virtue of being chairman of the National Security Advisory Committee). On a positive note, this shows the power of media in society, that it is just as powerful as security organs of state, hence the need for strict professionalism.

During my first week I witnessed an interesting scene that has not left my mind five years down the line. A news reporter had invited a source into the studio for an interview to give his story some attribution and thus, objectivity. Soon after he had escorted the source, the station’s managing director, a pharmacist by profession, retired though, summoned the reporter to his office and asked him how much the man had paid to be heard in the news. The young man who had some training in journalism tried to explain to the MD that he was gathering news and sources don’t pay ‘to be heard’.

The MD said he was running a business and all businesses are in it to make money. The reporter received no protection from his Editor even though he had assigned him the story. After the matter had passed I asked the MD for ample time where I explained in detail how broadcast media makes its money; that it was by selling airtime but not in that manner.

But how hard is it to play your role as a journalist in Kenya? How possible is it to work within the Code of Conduct for the Practice of Journalism as is spelt out in the Media Act 2007?

There are several challenges that impair objectivity within the practice.

I begin with what I perceive to be the most influential.

Media ownership At a time when political temperatures were rising, a few months to the last election (2007), I was hired by West Media Limited to restructure their budding new media investment in Western Kenya. They had launched a vernacular radio station and given it a name that resonated well with the entire western region rather than a few ethnic groups. They wanted to restructure their operations and content to be in sync with audiences across the region. My role was to ensure that goal is achieved. I was to give professional advice to the board of three- a lawyer, a surgeon and a retired pharmacist, on positioning, overall sound of the station, and its editorial stand.

During my induction week I had learnt that most editorial assignments at the station were given under instructions from the ‘owner’. I had to make him understand, reluctantly though, that broadcasting was an art governed by written laws and the unwritten laws; that we entertain and inform to win audiences, but make money when the corporate world seek to reach the audiences (clients and customers) through ‘us’. That’s when we sell them airtime. They use that ‘space’ to advertise their products or services.

However, for him business must make money and throughout the campaigns of 2007, all talk shows on the station were arranged by him and paid for by politicians to market themselves.

There was no single show that met the journalistic principles of information dissemination (Balance, objectivity and opportunity to reply).

This incident and many others that may never be reported, clearly show that one of the disturbing interferences to a journalist’s objectivity in Kenya is influences by media owners. The influences are more pronounced when the owners are politicians or businessmen who invest in media solely for profits. There are those who understand journalistic practices and will even act on advice from editorial managers. However, now and then they will be driven by the belief they are employers of journalists and therefore have moral authority over them and, can order them to take a particular direction over an editorial matter.

It is on this note that I will allude to a regular analogy given by veteran journalist and respected trainer Joe Kadhi in his training sessions across the country. The former Managing Editor of Daily Nation has on several occasions challenged sitting sessions thus: “Journalism is a profession that must be run by its own professionals.

Trying to interfere with our practice is going against our code of ethics. Let’s imagine that this hall is turned into a hospital and funded by well endowed investors. They will hire experts in different fields of medicine: Surgeons, dentists, gaenecologists, pharmacists and so on. Now I ask you, will the owners walk into the hospital one day and say,’ Operate on that one, give an injection to this one, discharge that one? If the answer is NO why then do media professionals allow owners to behave as though they know our profession better? Why should they tell

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you, a trained journalist, to write this and not that?”

Every other day Kenyans are treated to sweeping statements from large media organisations boasting of their independence, balance and putting public interest first. But a keen look at their editorial products and the tweaks in their coverage sends a different massage. A look at top managers at key media houses and how they are hired indicates that owning media in the country is the envy of many a powerful individuals especially politicians. What comes out is that by having a key stake in media one would have found himself the surest way of shaping and even controlling public opinion.

In his report Factually True, Legally Untrue researcher Othieno Nyanjom rightly observes in his executive summary that; ‘On the eve of Kenya’s first General Election under the new Constitution, it is significant that two aspiring presidents, who are among the four Kenyans indicted at the International Criminal Court- ICC for Post-Election Violence, are also major media investors. Kenya’s legislation for media management has not been fully operationalised due to a history of weak governance and impunity. This has spawned weak professionalism, with many media practitioners being poorly paid and/or remunerated, and working under unsatisfactory conditions of employment. This makes them amenable to manipulation by politician – owners of media outlets, politicians in general, and the corporate sector.

Kenya’s two foremost media houses – Nation Media Group (NMG) and Standard Group (SG) - are on the domestic stock exchange. While NMG’s dominant shareholder, the Aga Khan, has traditionally deferred to the government, SG’s dominant shareholding involves former President Moi, even if indirectly so. However the electronic media is dominated by the Royal Media Services, which has been partial to President Kibaki.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga is associated with Neural Digital Multiple radio stations, while ICC – bound; presidential aspirants; Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Mr William Ruto are respectively associated with Mediamax Group and Kass Media Group. Other national 40

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politicians with media interests include Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, Minister Charity Ngilu and ex- minister Raphael Tuju. Several immediate former parliamentarians and aspiring politicians also have direct or indirect media interests most notably FM stations.’’

Following this well researched exposition by Nyanjom, I state the reason why key political figures have invested in media is not simply for purposes of business and profits. It even passes for fair comment to say of all the influences and interferences to journalists’ objectivity, media ownership takes the lead in Kenya.

All this is guided by the old adage that you do not bite the hand that feeds you.

Tribalism and Nepotism While it has been claimed politicians and leaders in the corporate world influence public debate and shape public opinion by buying off journalists, I will safely argue that in most newsrooms journalists are victims of the great Kenyan malady; Tribalism and nepotism.

It’s not strange to find journalists keeping only contacts of politicians or corporate managers who are members of their ethnic group. Let it be understood that it is not a crime to network well with sources from ones backyard, neither is it wrong to have an identity; what needs to be understood is that the interest of the greater public comes first to a professional journalist.

This without doubt goes against most key ethical principles such as Independence and impartiality. It is therefore to say that while Media ownership can be considered the greatest influence in bending the journalist code of ethics, ethnic identities appear to hold such strong influences on journalists and broadcasters which negatively affect ethical standards in Kenyan media.

A journalist admires Media Council of Kenya publications.

‘Brown envelope’ There is a common belief in Kenya and the world that monetary handouts (famously referred to as the brown envelope) influence journalists to tweak facts in favour of a particular side. However, from experience this factor carries the littlest of influences on journalists - at least those I work with. Some politicians have also been known to give such handouts.

However, in most Kenyan newsrooms there are journalists working at different levels of their organisationsmanagement and non-management, who are said to receive allowances from politicians for purposes of ensuring favorable coverage. This can be seen through the stands they take in editorial meetings.

The ideal situation Everything said and done, it must be understood that at the heart of every election are three sets of rights; the right of the voters to make a fully informed choice, the right of the candidates to put their policies across and the right of the media to freely report and express their views on matters of public interest. Media must strive to fulfill these rights. The key roles of journalists during an election therefore are to ensure the citizen is empowered to make an informed choice.

By Wellingtone Nyongesa is the Radio News Editor at the Standard Group.

Media Coverage of Polls Critical for Smooth Change of Guard Being the society’s watchdog and opinion shaper, the crucial role of the media in the forthcoming general election cannot be undervalued. As OLOO JANAK reports, all eyes are on the media to clear its name on the ambivalent role it played in the last general election. concluded that the Kenyan media had come under intolerable pressure.

The emotional speeches and experiences from a number of speakers, including editors and journalists was a clear testimony to the fact that media outlets, and indeed, individual journalists had gone through a lot of pressure.

The Round table analysed the role of the media during the election and made a number of conclusions and recommendations, published in a small booklet with support from IMS – Kenya Media under Pressure, The Nairobi Round Table Recommendations.

His Excellency Hon. Mwai Kibaki, C.G.H., M.P., President of the Republic of Kenya and Commander-in-Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces registers as a voter using the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) machine.

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he spotlight is again on the media as Kenyans head to the ballot box and already, media reporting of the electioneering activities has been riveting, peaking with the pioneering Presidential Debate, bringing together all the eight presidential aspirants.

The media environment has improved significantly over the last five years but glaring gaps and challenges remain, which have continued to attract debate and criticism from media product consumers, industry stakeholders and Government agencies.

The focus on the role of the media in shaping events of 2007/8 and the perception that some media channels fuelled the hostilities and

Post-Election Violence at the time, have led to sustained soul searching among industry stakeholders, almost continuously for the last five years.

One of the earliest attempts at assessing the role of the media came on February 12, 2008 when Article 19, in collaboration with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), International News Safety Institute (INSI), International Media Support (IMS) and local media stakeholders – The Kenya Editors Guild (KEG), Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) and the Kenya Correspondents Association, convened “The Nairobi Round Table”.

The forum also supported by World Association of Newspapers and International Press Institute,

A number of challenges that faced the media and journalists were identified and included security concerns, trauma and poor pay among others.

Journalists facing numerous challenges: • Journalists and other media practitioners suffered trauma but lacked counseling to deal with the situation; • The safety and security of journalists had not been addressed and little effort had been made prior to the elections, to provide basic safety equipment and kits; • There had been no attempt to train journalists to appreciate the importance of conflict sensitive journalism and most were covering conflicts for the first time; • Media practitioners operated in a climate of fear and intimidation with many journalists receiving threats either directly, or through their cell phones or hate emails. There were threats The Media Observer

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to media institutions, ban on live broadcasting and threats of withdrawal of advertising, among others; • There had been minimal practice of professional conduct among journalists and media institutions in terms of accuracy, balance and fair coverage, leading to perception of partisanship both at the individual and institutional levels; • Lack of professional training among most journalists, but more so among those working in FM radio stations, with employment being based on non professional considerations; • Rampant corruption was cited among individual journalists in the field and news rooms, and this was feared to have permeated the industry up to the top levels.

In the first quarter of 2008, Kenya Correspondents Association (KCA), Kenya Association of Photographers and Designers Association (KAPIDE) and the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) conducted trauma counseling for journalists who suffered from the Post-Election Violence. This effort was supported by IMS for three months and benefitted about 150 journalists, mostly field based correspondents culminating in the publication and launch of the Healing the Messenger, a journalist’s trauma handbook in May/June of 2008.

The booklet has also been used widely as a reference and training material for journalists. This effort for the first time mainstreamed trauma counseling for journalists. The new Constitution has strong provisions

Industry stakeholders have engaged in tackling key issues, holding numerous consultations, training journalists at various levels and consulting with the Government and other stakeholders in a more open way than before.

Led by the Media Council of Kenya (MCK), much ground has been covered with various practical guidelines developed on covering elections, training on conflict sensitive reporting, monitoring media reporting and giving feedback via publications and public forums.

One can say the self-regulating role of the Media Council of Kenya has been working but there have been challenges within and outside the industry, which must be addressed.

These include more adherence to and

• The then existing legal and constitutional framework did not guarantee freedom of expression and respect for human rights. The labour laws were weak leading to exploitation of journalists and threats against joining unions and associations; • The media community suffered from weak institutions in terms of membership, financial and organizational capacity. Deliberate efforts among media owners to weaken journalists’ institutions were cited and lack of solidarity among journalists in the wake of violation of their rights.

The Round Table made recommendations on how to deal with each of these gaps and challenges. Five years down the line, and with Kenyans holding another General Election, this time more complex in its structure and perhaps more contested than in 2007, it may be said most recommendations have been have been followed through, with varying degrees of success.

As part of the recommendations, a booklet on Conflict Sensitive Journalism was developed, and published with the support of IMS

by May 2008. This has widely been used by the Media Council of Kenya and other media organizations to train journalists.

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The launch of the presidential bid by the Restore and Build Kenya (RBK) presidential candidate James ole Kiyiapi was well covered by the media. on media freedom and access to information but challenges remain in the slow passage of requisite legislation to make them operational.

Various Bills touching on the media regulation have been discussed by media industry stakeholders but remain inclusive partly due to the packed legislative agenda of the last Parliament and partly due to suspicion among media stakeholders and Government, especially in respect to re-structuring of the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) and the broadcast sector.

respect for its policies and verdicts or ruling through the Complaints Commission.

In the run up to the General Election, the media have to a large extent done good work, demonstrating more capacity to cover the campaigns and candidates, with a semblance of fairness and accuracy.

The desire to stick to issues has been there but clearly it has been difficult for the media to avoid focusing on personalities, with the more dominant political figures still remaining Prime Minister Raila Odinga the presidential candidate of the Coalition for Reforms

leanings or support for different parties and personalities.

The political environment has created a fertile ground for corruption and influence within the media sector.

Media ownership has also made it possible for certain issues to be swept under the carpet in certain regions, either deliberately or due to fear by journalists working in those media houses.

and Democracy (CORD), Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenya of the Jubilee alliance and Amani Coalition’s Musalia Mudavadi.

The media have also remained fixated on ethnicity as a key campaign issue.

Key issues as inequality in resource allocation, the land question, the International Criminal Court charges facing four prominent Kenyans, constitutional and institutional reforms including that of the police, often get covered but with but with an ethnic sentiment.

Different media outlets appear to have taken positions in support of different competing political sides while, in principle, declaring “free, fair balanced …” etc. Individual journalists also appear to have taken sides, just like in 2007/8.

Media ownership patterns in Kenya and commercial interests make it difficult for the media to a fair role in reporting electioneering processes.

The deep ethnic polarization that Kenya has suffered from over the years compounds the problem as this often marries with the other two.

The challenges identified in 2007/8 during the Nairobi Round Table have not all been responded to well or addressed. Corruption remains rife within the media sector and among journalists. During the party nominations in mid January, 2013, it was evident that corruption and other elements of partisanship took over and the media nearly lost it completely, focusing inordinately on certain areas, political parties

and individual politicians both in a negative and positive way.

The party nominations, it was generally agreed were chaotic and a sham. But the reporting of the chaos appeared deliberately selective – muted and perhaps managed in some areas while robust and gleeful in other areas.

In retrospect and based on interviews both with journalists and other sources, it has emerged there was a lot of influence from different quarters on the reporting at different levels of the media.

Nyanza was portrayed as the most chaotic, with scenes of demonstrators burning tyres and blocking roads.

Many people have questioned the line of interviews and questions posed during some of those live reporting sessions, some of them by senior reporters dispatched from Nairobi.

Some people in Nyanza have complained of a deliberate attempt to only interview those disgruntled and in some cases, journalists were reported to have either manipulated scenes on camera or worked with disgruntled politicians who claimed they were rigged out to manage the scenes of demonstrations that were seen on TV. In parts of Nyanza, Rift Valley, Central and Coast Regions, a number of journalists have reported fears over their safety due a number of factors. Some of them are related to the perceived positions their media houses took while in some cases, it was due to their own perceived

The media industry should ideally have had a series of review forums to take stock of the reporting at the time and also plan how to improve towards the elections. It is true that individual media houses have been doing internal reviews.

The media have done fairly well in their reporting of the presidential candidates that have been deliberate efforts to give space to each of them, of course except the late comers Abduba Dida and Paul Muite.

The FM radio stations have done their part but many of them have not changed much and still carry reckless and inciting talk. Indeed some of the comments after the nominations on the radios would pass off as sponsored messages by certain politicians but clothed in careful words.

In some regions, it was understood specific talk show hosts were retained by certain politicians or were actively supporting some candidates. When preferred candidates lost, they poured vitriol on the nomination process in whole regions or against certain parties and personalities.

The media must remain restrained to help the country navigate this delicate transition and transformation.

More so if as is predicted, we go into a presidential run-off. Therein resides the greatest challenges to the survival of Kenya.

There are fears over the run-off management and the whole transition since it is new and we also have elements not necessarily keen on a smooth change of guard. If the media get co-opted into the game, we will go through a most painful period again.

Oloo Janak is the Chairman of the Kenya Correspondents Association.

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Media Ownership and the Link to Political Power The world over, political power or the search for it has been strongly linked to the ownership and or control of the powerful tool that is the media. OTHIENO NYANJOM dichotomises the Kenyan case.

Media Council of Kenya members confer when they met the Joint Committee on Administration and National Security, Defence and Foreign Relations, Justice and Legal Affairs and Equal Opportunity at parliament buildings.

From left, Mr. Ezekiel Mutua, Mr. Linus Gitahi, Mr. Haron Mwangi and Mr. Kiprono Kittony.

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he contemporary discussion of Kenyan political ownership of the media – hereinafter PMO – is likely to trace the origins of the phenomenon to the period immediately after the 1991 return to multi-party politics. That approach is likely to identify Kenneth Matiba as a pioneering political media owner. Yet, keener media analysts will know that PMO dates back to the early explicit nationalist activities of the likes of Harry Thuku, Jomo Kenyatta and Oginga Odinga – who early appreciated the evangelising scope of the missionary media, and to the implicit initiatives of Asians like Jevanjee (1901), Achariar (1920s) and the Vidyarathis (mid1940s). Into the New Millennium, Kenya has experienced a proliferation of PMOs, notably the FM (radio) stations, a recent research – Factually True, Legally Untrue – accepting previous hypotheses that the PMO phenomenon could be driven by commercial or political motives, or

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both (Nyanjom, 2012). Yet, a deeper historical review of media control in Kenya might at least emphasise a political over a commercial PMO motive; and might also underscore a seeming conservatism among Kenyan politicians that does not allow them to appreciate the changed PMO context brought about by the Constitution and its impacts on the legal and institutional contexts within which the media (should) now operate.

Reel forge Media data cited by the Media Council of Kenya [MCK] (2012) show the grand revenues generated by print and electronic media advertising.

Kenyan television [TV], radio and print advertising revenues rose by respective rates of 45%, 37% and 63% per cent between 2010 and 2011. Royal Media Services [RMS] dominated revenues in the first quarter of 2012, accounting for at least 47% of the Sh7.7 billion in TV revenues and at least 20% of the Sh8.5 billion in radio revenues, while the Nation

Media Group [NMG] accounted for 53% of the print revenues of Sh1.2 billion. In terms of market and/ or audience shares, RMS – whose share of electronic frequencies is only exceeded by national broadcaster, the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation [KBC] – also dominates radio (with eight local language stations) and TV, while NMG accounted for more than double the past-7-days readership during 2011/12 of its nearest rival, the Standard Group.

Two important factors arise: the RMS entrepreneur has recently declared his support for CORD presidential candidate Raila Odinga. NMG joins RMS as the pre-emptive media shapers of political opinion, and as the current backbone of the influential Media Owners Association [MOA].

These powers over the sector invoke memories of the tyranny of state media into the New Millennium that deified former presidents Kenyatta and Daniel Moi, and their exclusive

ruling party, KANU. Thus, Articles 33, 34 and 35 respective constitutional provisions for freedoms of expression, the media and information, would seem to strengthen the hands of the Kenyan would-be media oligarchs, RMS and NMG, making media ownership attractive for politicians.

Yet, these same constitutional provisions and legal and institutional frameworks they spawn should make PMOs think twice about the actual political opportunities offered by media ownership.

Reviewing media history The financial attraction of media ownership is self-evident for active and prospective PMOs and non-political media owners, and the general public, and needs little further elaboration.

The greater attention is however due for understanding the Kenyan political lure of the media, arguably unprecedented in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This Kenyan phenomenon has a sound historical basis which has shaped the constitutional, legal and institutional reforms alluded to above.

An enduring objective of the precolonial and colonial media in Kenya was indoctrination against ‘indigenous values’. Traditional, pre-colonial society had its media; so one can qualify the missionary initiatives of the late 1800s to have merely pioneered the modern media in Kenya, evangelizing against ‘atavism’, and for Christ. During colonialism, the mainstream media primarily glorified all that was European, while also denigrating indigenous African values.

The colonial government repeatedly repressed attempts at evolving an independent African modern media, the situation often only being saved by the surreptitious initiatives of Indian media entrepreneurs exploiting their privileged racial status between the Europeans and Africans. But often too, the European settlers demanded even more draconian colonial government measures against the emergent indigenous media which they saw to threaten their long-term interest of an eventual apartheid state in Kenya.

Thus, at independence, the Government inherited a repressive media management framework primarily in the service of the ruling minority. While the print media largely constituted private foreign investment, the Government monopoly

of the electronic media enabled its development into a medium for the propagation primarily of state interests, often in conflict with public interests.

created for media freedom, hence the attraction of PMO for individuals wishing upon themselves the media glorification of Kenyan presidents to date.

Consequently, Kenya was bereft of ‘development journalism’, the print and electronic media championing ‘foreign values’ through the likes of Andy Capp, Modesty Blaise, the UK/US Top Ten, William Tell and Bonanza, even as Jamii ya Mzee Pembe struggled to emerge from obscurity. The news broadcasts invariably attracted prime audiences, even if the dominant content was a rehash of what the President did, with marginal attention to other politicians.

Yet, PMOs need to appreciate the extent to which that same Constitution and resulting legal and institutional frameworks have provided against impunity by media owners in general, MCK’s Guidelines for Election Coverage – hereinafter, Guidelines – requiring a stakeholders’ acknowledgement that ‘freedoms come with responsibilities’.

And if one missed the broadcasts, then Yaliyotokea gladly repeated it weekly. Into Moi’s presidency, even the church hymns sung during the services he attended religiously – the pun intended – became news.

Notwithstanding its private ownership, the print media too came on board this sycophancy, finding front-page space for the President in every edition. Thus, alongside the ubiquitous presidential portrait in every business premises and on legal tender, the President was perpetually in the public domain.

The net effect of this state of affairs was that while the average politician only campaigns during brief electioneering periods, the President and favoured individuals were in perpetual campaign mode.

This situation reportedly prompted RMS entrepreneur SK Macharia’s enduring ambition to invest in the media, KBC having declined to carry adverts Macharia had paid for on behalf of Odinga’s 1992 campaign (Nyanjom, 2012: 13).

But presidential contender Matiba’s effective own use of his weekly paper, The People, in popularizing himself was also not lost on the likes of Macharia and other politicians.

Thus was launched Macharia’s long, dramatic and often unrewarding struggle against the Moi regime town and operate a media outlet.

On Kibaki’s accession in 2003, Macharia launched his successful drive to media mogul-hood. In the 2010 promulgation of the new Kenyan constitution that curtailed the imperial presidencies of Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki, much space has been

Media management frameworks Under the Constitution’s Bill of Rights (Chapter Four), Article 31 safeguards the privacy of citizens (such as from the glare of the media), while Article 32 provides, inter alia, for the freedoms of conscience, beliefs and religion. Article 33 provides for freedom of media practice (from state interference), but notes at subsection (2) that such freedom does not condone (the publication of) hate speech, hatred and discrimination (as defined by Article 27). Since a prime objective of PMOs is electoral mileage, it is apt to cite the core values and principles of journalism listed by the Guidelines, which include the accuracy and impartiality of reporting, protection of information sources, distinction between editorials and news, and the right of reply. Aware of the potential misuse of media outlets against opponents, the Guidelines define ‘hate speech’ to include:

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any form of communication that disparages, degrades, dehumanises and/or demeans individuals or a group by promoting hatred and encouraging violence against an individual or group on the basis of factors including, but not limited to religion, race, colour, ethnicity, gender, age, political and/or any other opinion, national or any other social origin.

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The Guidelines also note while media houses may allow political advertising whose content is primarily responsibility of the advertiser, the buck stops with the media owner over observance of legality, accuracy, taste and decency. Finally, the Media Act requires practitioner adherence to the Code of Conduct.

Meanwhile, reviews to the Books and Newspapers Act (1989), Kenya Information and Communications Act (1999) and Media Act (2007) are designed to strengthen their provisions, especially with respect to oversight of the sector. Thus MCK and the Communications Commission of Kenya [ICCK] should be better equipped to oversee the sector.

Discussion: ‘freedoms… with responsibilities…’

The history of the modern Kenyan media has been one of minority control in total disregard of majority interests. The missionaries drove an agenda that disparaged indigenous religious beliefs; the colonial government championed the alienation of African from their rights – especially over land; and the pioneering commercial media largely championed settler and European investor interests, struggling to subvert emerging concerns of human rights and justice championed by the Indian and African media. This repressive media model was conveniently carried into the independence years by a Kenyatta government whose betrayal of the ideals of the nationalist struggle required that it stifle the kind of debates that led to the 1966 launch of the left-leaning Kenya People’s Union as a counter to KANU’s emerging dictatorship. Thus the media was at best over-laden with spurious content unrelated to emerging development 46

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needs, but became at its worst, the sycophantic mouth-piece of incumbent presidents.

Awareness of the liberating potential of the media runs through Kenya’s history; and its commercial potential has become evident since the early 2000’s liberalisation of the Kenyan airwaves. The growing desire by Kenyan politicians for some control of the media has been heightened by the evidence of its effectiveness in perennially keeping such politicians’ agenda in the face of the public. While various post-Moi changes opened up space for private media investments, it was soon evident that the constitutional, legal and institutional frameworks were anachronisms.

The 2010 promulgation of the new constitution opened up freedoms, including for the media, which has since been progressively rationalized by legal and institutional reforms.

Kenyan regimes to date have neither slandered nor libeled political opponents – for the simple reason that changes to the old, independence constitution made such avenues of ‘containment’ unnecessary given the imperial presidential powers that literally transformed wishes in fiats. That aside, successive presidents also employed the media for their own extensive political selfaggrandisement. This was managed through the extensive practice of impunity, among the more recent instances being the 2007 raid on the Standard Group. It is likely that such powers enhanced the image of the media as a channel for political gain, alongside the commercial gain arising from the on-going revival of the Kenyan economy. However, actual and prospective PMOs (and other prospective media investors) must place their initiatives in the context of

the changes since the promulgation of the Constitution.

For one, the Constitution has generally – and specifically through its Chapter 6 on Leadership and Integrity – curtailed the scope for impunity.

Indeed, since the 1991 return to multi-partyism, Kenyans partly managed to enforce a distinction between the government and the state in having KBC declared the public broadcaster. Various other issues were subsequently removed from the realm of presidential discretion into law; but enforcement has been slow. Thus, a 2002 attempt at impartial political coverage by a KBC chief executive led to his ouster. And while the CCK has been statutorily independent since 1999, its executive has constantly had to accommodate ‘directives from above’. This has for instance led to a situation where broadcasters are operating without due licenses.

Such circumstances have led to the demands for legislative reforms to enhance the capacities of the media oversight bodies – Registrar Books and Newspapers, CCK and MCK – to control media practitioners. While the reforms frameworks and their implementation are yet to be finalised, the outlook is that there is going to be much tighter regulation of media owners, which might rationalize the attraction of media ownership. While media ownership will continue to be a rewarding enterprise, actual and prospective PMOs must familiarize themselves with the responsibilities brought on board by the Constitution and the emerging legislative and institutional frameworks.

Othieno Nyanjom is a researcher and consultant on development issues including media, public spending and governance.

Accreditation

In accordance to sections 4(k), 13(2), 19(1) and 36 of the Media Act 2007, the Media Council of Kenya undertakes Annual Accreditation of journalists practicing in Kenya.

• One of its main aims is to improve professionalism among journalists as it ensures that all accredited journalists have the right skills to carry out their duties in a professional manner as accorded to by the Code of Conduct for the Practice of Journalism in Kenya.

• It also fulfils the Council’s mandate to compile and maintain a register of journalists, media practitioners, media enterprises and such other related registers.

Benefits of Accreditation 1. Helps in professionalisation in journalism.

2. It helps journalists to access information by allowing participation in conferences, workshops, trainings and other gatherings.

3. It enhances the protection of the rights and privileges of journalists in the performance of their duties.

Requirements for Accreditation 1. A letter from the employer 2. Freelance journalists are required to produce a letter of reference from the organisation they correspond for, a portfolio of work done and proof of professional training.

3. A clear passport photograph taken on a white background.

4. An accreditation fee of Ksh 2,000 for practising journalists and Ksh 300 for students.

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Promoting press freedom & responsible journalism

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