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.
