If the media’s primary role is to mirror society, meaning society sees itself through the media, then many would reasonably argue that Kenya came out looking bad in the just concluded referendum campaigns.
It is a matter that is bound to haunt the Kenyan media for long, but perhaps the enormity of the problem can best be illustrated only by drawing parallels with events in other countries.
Perhaps because the media, in Kenya like anywhere else, seeks to publicise highly sensitive issues, sometimes making or destroying careers, its performance is often inevitably monitored very intensely, which simply means governments, politicians, business people and even the ordinary citizens always have keen interest in the work of the media.
But the yardstick by which any media house will eventually be judged is, of course, its ability to inform accurately, entertain and educate the public responsibly.
This is precisely where, according to British Broadcasting Corporation political editor, Andrew Marr, in his most recent book, My Trade, the media derives its influence.
Others have described the media as the public watchdog and others, still, as the Fourth Estate, which simply means that other than the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary, the media is the fourth most important public institution – whether privately owned or otherwise.
But it is here also that the danger larks. This is because, in the absence of strict adherence to ethics or due to dearth of professionalism, media owners or individual journalists either use their privileged position to get favours or allow themselves to be used by various interest groups for selfish ends.
If what Rwanda’s radio RTLM did between 1993 and 1994 is anything to go by, then, in Africa, the media is also at the risk of being used dangerously by some negative sectarian interests in general or tribal chauvinists in particular.
The April 1994 Rwandan genocide in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred has partly been attributed to inflammatory broadcasts by radio RTLM. Broadcasting partly in French but mainly in vernacular, radio RTLM, describing minority Tutsi’s as cockroaches, called on the majority Hutus to get rid of the unwanted insects. The rest, as they say, is now history.
The media also being an enterprise, some media owners round the world have been known to form unholy alliances – mainly with the political elite – in order to secure the survival of their businesses.
In their book, The Murdoch Archipelago, British writers Bruce Page and Elaine Potter accuse the Australian media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, of cow-towing to the whims of politicians and governments of the day, sometimes even offering them financial favours, lavish media coverage and circumventing the law, as a way of protecting his media empire.
Murdoch, who inherited the empire and what Bruce and Elaine describe as unethical behaviour from his father, obviously denies the allegations even though evidence on the ground is demonstrably different.
To media pundits, Murdoch’s media outfits like News Corp and Fox News largely owe their survival and rapid growth to favours from government officials.
It matters little whether it is in his motherland Australia or his adopted country, the USA, or his recent exploits in Asia or even the UK.
And, in return, he offers unreserved support to the government through his media outlets.
His media outlets, for instance, supported Margaret Thatcher when it was beneficial but shifted abruptly into supporting Tony Blair when the political atmosphere changed.
He does the same in the US depending on who is in power and was at the vanguard of the infamous war that is today raging in Iraq, without raising a finger, simply because the war was the project of President George Bush.
That is the reason observers think he has no ethics, stands for nothing and is ready to sell even the whole of humankind if that is what it takes to secure the interests of his business empire.
Journalist Tina Brown wrote in the Washington Post last September that Murdoch’s newspapers – British, American and Australian alike – operate on a policy of what the historian Michael Marrus, author of Vichy France and the Jews called "anticipatory compliance".
French authorities were never instructed to round up the Jews but did so because that’s what they thought their conquerors, the Germans, wanted.
The question that now clouds the minds of many media pundits is this: was a section of the Kenyan media guilty of "anticipatory compliance" in the just concluded referendum campaigns?
But the description that Bruce Page, in an interview with Tina Brown last September, has of Murdoch is even more astounding.
Bruce says Murdoch is a man of "fluid nothingness at the core – less a matter of drives than lack of the containing structure found in normal people."
Again, this provides food for thought for media investors in Kenya. Is their media investment all they care for? Are they ready to sacrifice Kenya’s nationhood and betray the aspirations of Kenyans in support of the government of the day as long as that assures them of commercial protection?
If all media investors were to behave like Murdoch, then the general good would always be subordinated to the interests of the few media owners and thus a cabal of the political elite. The situation, as has been recognised in more developed democracies where anti-monopoly laws have been developed to address this specific problem, is worse where media ownership is concentrated in only a few hands.
But where such monopoly is indirect, the danger often arises when media owners want to come together – like in an association – with the sole purpose of protecting their interests in an environment like Kenya’s that lacks clear guidelines on monopoly. If it is true then that, like Murdoch, media investors would want to cow-tow to the government of the day, then it is only a matter of conjecture as to just how far they can defend press freedom. There is even greater danger when the ruling clique’s primary aim is far from the collective national interests.
Besides, in a country like Kenya that has 42 ethnic groups and diverse cultures, a media house that allows itself to be held hostage to the narrow ethnic interests of the ruling clique runs the risk of pushing the entire nation, like radio RTLM did, into conflict. It is in recognition of such negative power of the media that some in various countries have advocated for the establishment of an independent regulatory body with real statutory powers to check media excesses.
But the question for the media industry players, of course, has been whether such a regulatory body should be state controlled or controlled by the media itself. It is an old argument that often appears to lean favourably on the side of the media since it has rightly been argued that governments are wont to stifle freedom of expression and the media.
Yet the only qualification for that argument is that the media, of which a section has irreparably disregarded professional ethics and the social responsibility that comes with it, is capable of effective self-regulation and ensuring that certain minimum standards are upheld. In the event that such qualification fails to hold, then most governments will always have a strong case for intervention.
In fact, the Kenyan case clearly illustrates this. The Kanu government’s numerous attempts at coming up with draconian media bills – in 1994, 1996 and 2000 – to regulate the industry only failed to take off due to international pressure and the all powerful argument that media freedom should not be assailed by the government. The Narc Government, through the former Minister for Communication Raphael Tuju, has several times given indication of its intention to regulate the media.
The response of the Kenyan media to these government threats has been near predictable. In 2000, for instance, key industry players supported by a few donor agencies founded the Media Council, which only began to mature in 2002. It is generally held that this was the product of negotiations between the government and the media, as a result of which the government agreed to drop its desire in return for the media coming up with an effective mechanism of regulating itself and arbitrating in the event of disputes.
But, just like it became evident when the first lady Lucy Kibaki literally pitched tent in a media house and even slapped a journalist, the Media Council is as weak as they come. While it can punish errand behaviour in the mainstream media such as The Standard and The Nation, it has absolutely no mechanism of reigning in the perverse or yellow journalism that characterise the alternative media. As such, the good things that the mainstream media has tried to put in place have been negated by the pervasiveness of the gutter press, arguably the most ugly side of press freedom ever witnessed in Kenya. And now, horror of horrors, a semblance of gutter journalism has gone electronic – on TV and Radio.
There are, of course, those who will argue like Englishman John Stuart Mill did in the past century that, in an open market place of ideas, there is no need to suppress what is false in favour of the truth since the truth shall always prevail. This argument relies on the fact that the otherwise highly gullible readers will, after some time, be able to tell the difference between a reliable publication and the unreliable one. They will then stop purchasing the unreliable or untruthful publication, forcing it to die a natural death.
Nothing can be far from reality since, in terms of circulation and market reach, the Kenyan gutter press has nothing to write home about. Yet they have defied all predictions and braved the harsh market conditions to remain on the newsstands. This is not surprising because what keeps them going is one of the industry’s most poorly concealed secrets. First, the journalists behind these gutter publications are least interested in their circulation and growth. They use them only as a tool for extortion. Secondly, the same politicians who complain about the prurient nature of the publications are the ones who actually fund some of them in order to besmirch their opponents.
This explains why in the lead up to the referendum on the Constitution, the headlines in the alternative media seemed to have something in common. "Orange minister’s wife raped, Mistress wrecks Orange minister’s marriage, Husband snatcher: Another divorce looms in the Moi family and Orange minister in sex scandal with maid" were just some of the headlines in the gutter press that could only give a glimpse into the strategies that were being employed by the referendum campaign rivals.
This is why some feel there is dishonesty on the part of the government when it cries foul about otherwise fairly balanced and truthful reportage in the mainstream media only for its senior officials to fund prurient literature on the newsstands. But this is not to say that what is published in the alternative press is wholesale propaganda without an iota of truth. And it is not to say that the mainstream media is innocent of manipulation in order to sway the public’s decision.
A good percentage of what the alternative media thrives on, especially touching on corruption in state corporations and ministries, and regardless of the motive of those who leak it out, is truthful. On this score alone, the burden rests with the mainstream media since, because of other vested interests, it eschews the publication of news for reasons that are far from professional. This leaves the otherwise desperate whistleblowers with no other outlet than the gutter press, which ends up doing a pathetic job of it.
But some would ague that the biggest culprit has been the electronic media, with the print media only pulling the tail. This is the reason why, other than the Media Council, many probing questions have been directed at the government-sponsored Communications Commission of Kenya for its inability to regulate the industry. It is a problem that has been around for long, but whose enormity only became evident in the lead up to the referendum campaigns.
Every time there has been a breach of the broadcasting regulations, CCK has come out looking even more toothless if not entirely partisan. This was the case in 2004 when it bungled in its attempt to solve the airwaves dispute between Citizen FM and Kiss FM. There are those who will argue that, the government move to switch Kass FM off air only days to the referendum was partisan, especially given that CCK came out looking like a helpless bystander. "My biggest problem with electronic media management in Kenya is with CCK’s licensing procedures. One has to be tied to the regime to get the licence. As such, media ownership in the country is concentrated in the hands of only a few ethnic communities," says Ms Atsango Chesoni, a Nairobi-based human rights lawyer.
But the biggest problem was that the challenge posed by the vernacular stations like Coro FM, Inooro FM, Kameme FM and of course Kass FM to national cohesiveness, especially in the face of ethnic polarisation of the country, is by far more serious than what the simple closure of Kass FM can achieve.
In view of the massages aired on some of these stations in the run up to the referendum – can someone analyse the tapes of broadcasts by these stations in the last three months? – and while there has been a worthy case for community media, debate on the viability of vernacular stations and what kind of material they should be allowed to air is far from over. The chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, Maina Kiai, was the first to raise the red flag on vernacular stations last October but Rose Kimotho, the proprietor of Kameme FM, quickly defended the stations.
In lead up to the general elections in 1992, 1997 and 2002, the main culprit was, of course, the national broadcaster, the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation.
But many would agree that KBC’s problem of partisan coverage is yet to go away, since, with Narc’s ascension to power, it only shifted course from irrational support for Kanu to the Narc Government. With the Narc Government divided down the middle, the national broadcaster found itself being accused of advancing narrow sectarian interests of a small powerful clique in government.
The case against KBC is even more important.
As a national broadcaster, it is partly funded by the taxpayer’s money. This means that, like the Voice of America, British Broadcasting Corporation or even Germany’s Deutch Welle, its editorial policy can only be guided by what is generally in the interest of the nation and the aspirations of the people of Kenya. It is the only station that can afford to ignore commercial interests to run programmes that, even though may not attract heavy advertisement, promote the country’s cultural, economic and political aspirations.
In the referendum debate, for instance, KBC was probably the best suited to provide analysis of the document in view of the public aspirations, something that, to the disappointment of many, did not happen.
It can therefore be safely said that, in Kenya, the role of the national broadcaster is yet to be understood.
But the most significant thing over the coverage of this referendum period was the fact that complaints were not so much about the performance of KBC – they tried amidst great constraints – as they were about Citizen Radio and TV, together with other vernacular stations like Kameme FM, Kass FM and Inooro FM.
Former Environment Minister, Kalonzo Musyoka, complained last October about a certain media tycoon whose media outlets were fanning tribal animosity, cautioning that, should Kenya degenerate into ethnic genocide like Rwanda did in 1994, then he should take full responsibility.
On Tuesday this week, the Leader of Official Opposition, Uhuru Kenyatta, complained about the proprietor of Citizen Radio and TV, SK Macharia, who he said was using his media outlets to run a hate campaign against other tribes.
SK Macharia himself was quoted in the local press as declaring that he was supporting the government and its push for the endorsement of the proposed Constitution.
While media pundits would argue that there is nothing exactly wrong in a media house taking a political stand, there can be no rational defence for the kind of distortions and ethnic innuendos that Citizen Radio and TV is being accused of.
Whatever the case, the performance of a section of the media during the referendum campaigns poses crucial challenges to the media.
In particular, the country will have to face up to the question of ethnicity, the place of vernacular stations in the face of rising tribal sentiments and work on how to strike a balance between the interests of media investors, press freedom and our nationhood.
These are issues that even the Media Owners Association cannot afford to ignore.
