Contemporary Threats: Media Freedom

Democratic rhetoric has unilaterally blamed absence of media freedom to government interference characteristic of African and oriental governments’ spewing vitriol that has determined discourse around media freedom.

However new threats to media freedom are in the offing as democracy spreads across the world.

I have come to like the BBC news channel in recent times due to its informative programming especially the coverage on Africa and the world as a whole. There was a time when we had our own Kenya Broadcasting Corporation. During the Moi regime and all the authoritarian use of the media to benefit myopic government ends, KBC lost all credibility as a media corporation and was more of a government mouthpiece akin to what we have as the government spokesman today.

Rightly it came under criticism and in an information age where there is a deluge of alternative media all and sundry migrated from KBC. It has since been plagued with losses, lagging behind and anecdotal affiliation to compromised media.

Why it did not transform into a respectable government funded media corporation like the BBC should be thought through if we believe in free press.

I say this because I believe the new threat to press freedom is over-commercialization, capital monopolies and political interest infringement.

When we opted away from government media we have since fallen to the corporate class who like the authoritarian governments driven by need to yoke people in propaganda, are driven by narrow minded self interest in profit. This has watered down journalism into sensational crowd pulling shenanigans mostly influenced by bigoted owner interests like the Ruppert Murdoch’s News of the world.  This is perhaps the biggest threat to journalism presently.

Plus with the rise of monopolies journalists are forced to play along editorial policies, some of which they do not even believe in. It closes out small entrants just like the autocratic bottlenecks used to.

To protect press freedom at this day and age we must look beyond the traditional threats into contemporary ones that threaten substance and importance of the fourth estate. We might have to go back to the traditional foe, the government corporation as a an alternative that is not driven by the myopia of profit but capable of churning out worthwhile journalism like the BBC and still leave the space open for alternative media. 

The Kenyan Fourth Estate: Role in Election

Kenya has in recent years had its media wake up to a realization that its professionalism was devoid, as any sweet voiced or good looking nobody could be a journalist.

Then came 2007, a turning point for almost everything in Kenya including realization of the need to ensure ethical and responsible journalism as journalist allegedly treated their role ‘irresponsibly’.

The Media Council of Kenya came alive in earnest robustness radically calling for all journalists to be accredited by it on grounds of academics and practice. Journalists are now thanks to them able to be cut out as professionals. During the elections only journalists with badges accented by IEBC were allowed near polling stations or tallying centres. And with such levels of accreditation plus the IEBC badges, we still could not trust journalists to provide the nation with poll figures. Instead it was decreed that only the results tallied from IEBC were supposed to be relayed. Journalists too scared to treat this times election ‘irresponsibly’ kept off too.

I doubt that it was beneficial as it would have proved important to have different tallies by more than just IEBC, e.g. the tallies carried out by Nation Media Group as referrals that would in effect help reconcile variances. Leaving IEBC to be the sole source of primary data inspired by the politics of fear or ‘peace’ as was our case leaves a lot to be desired about journalistic role in the election.

It makes void the point of accreditation if journalists cannot be trusted to do their work or would not do it for fear of being blamed. Hitherto irresponsible-unprofessional journalism has not been annihilated by badges and accreditation if we cannot trust journalist to announce results from the ground in real time.

Thus what would purge this profession of doubts and win back public trust that would allow us, as journalists do our work without being subjected to unwarranted restraint on the obvious. Surely I do not think packing our tabloids with expert analysis from non-journalist consultants is the solution.

If Media council of Kenya can strengthen curriculum of journalism schools encourage specialization in different discipline and have media houses reinforce this differentiation then we can have not just paper professionalism but practical as well.

We can build brands around disciplines of sciences, politics, health, social issues, finance etc and have media practitioners who we know have true command of their fields. Then we can trust them with the truth and its analytics.

I believe if we strongly had journalists who we could trust with political issues we would allow them to tell the story as it was instead of playing to the public gallery of peace. We could trust them with tallying just as a way of reconciling variances.

If our journalism is to rise above mediocrity then we should have the fourth estate realize they are not observers but key players in the business of running this country.