Dorcas you are right but I also agree with Kanja's call that we be more thorough on this issue. Otherwise, a superficial framing of this subject risks just burying the causes deeper as we re-assume our "traditional" respective points of views. I attended the meeting from where this thread was reported. And, incidentally "summary impressions" created by the mass media of quite detailed deliberations was a subject with well researched "backgrounders" urged. I hope the organisers could share the entire workshop report when its ready. To the list perhaps also add; - What role did various opinion pollsters play? Did they pour petrol all over Kenya then left? Motives... - What about new media? (email, attachments, internet, blogs, sms...) - What mechanisms exist that integrate info-consumers opinions? i.e. gauge media houses "one-wayness" vs. audience/citizens participation in shaping unfolding political subjects - Post crisis; what did various media not/do? - What did we FAIL to do?-individually and collectively Regards, Alex --- Kanja Waruru <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hi, Please allow me to comment on this matter and apologize for dragging you back to an issue that had been posted and quickly dismissed.
The media did not operate in isolation during and after the elections. And before we point fingers at the media and blame it for everything under the sun, perhaps we should first try to understand who the real players were in the elections and the general genesis of the crises. And in doing so we may need to ask ourselves these questions.
What role did politicians play in this crises? What about the churches and mosques? What about the security forces? What about the Electoral Commission? And finally what role did the media play?
My view is that we need to have a task force as suggested by the minister of information probably under the media council of Kenya to audit all these players, only then can we truly say who was innocent and who was guilty.
But i would also like to bring in another issue. During the elections the media was exercising the self regulation rule and a lot of the stories that were filed during this period were censored because they were hate speeches and issues not fit for printing but we thought it would all die out after the elections and things would also get back to normal.
Now on hindsight we ask ourselves should we have censored those stories or should we have reported them as presented?
i will be happy to hear your views the above. cheers. Kanja
--- alice <alice@apc.org> wrote:
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=41049
KENYA: The Media Is Not Innocent Kwamboka Oyaro
*NAIROBI, Feb 2 (IPS) - The media was partly
for the Rwandan genocide 14 years ago which left nearly one million people dead in 100 days. "Kill the Inkotanyi [cockroaches]!" a local radio station urged its listeners at the time. *
"30 Days in Words and Pictures: Media Response in Kenya During the Election Crisis" -- a workshop organised here last week by California-based media advocacy group Internews -- enabled media professionals to conduct a "self-audit" of the role local media played in the post-election violence. The audit revealed that media -- especially vernacular radio stations -- might be partly to blame for the on-going violence sparked off by the announcement of Mwai Kibaki as winner of the Dec. 27 elections.
The violence has reportedly claimed over 1,000
and displaced some 250,000 people since the December election.
David Ochami, a commissioner with the Media Council of Kenya, told IPS that long before the elections were held, vernacular radio stations had ignited ethnic consciousness among the listeners "making them support leaders from their own tribe and harbour bad feelings about people from other communities."
"The ethnic hate our radio station was propagating about those from outside the community was unbelievable. I cant repeat any of those expressions at this forum," said a journalist with a vernacular radio station. "The unfortunate thing is we let these callers speak vile and laughed about it."
"We took sides in the issue and we became subjective, forgetting our professional tenet of objectivity and neutrality. In fact, this polarization was so bad in the newsrooms that some broadcast journalists refused to cover or read news that wasnt favourable to the candidate or party they supported," said a journalist.
In fact, leading up to the elections the local media conveyed inflammatory campaign messages as advertisers announcements.
"Both print and broadcast media put money ahead of responsibility by accepting and conveying paid-for hate material," Mildred Baraza, a Nairobi- based journalist told IPS. "This could have incited the audience, and when they got a chance they avenged as a result of the pre-election messages," she said.
Redemtor Atieno, another Nairobi-based journalist who also helped to organise the workshop, is confident that the medias biased reporting contributed to the mayhem in the country.
"Professionalism was thrown to the dogs as tribe and partisanship carried the day. We failed our audience by conveying interests of politicians without questioning the impact of our stories," Atieno told IPS.
Participants at the workshop also blamed media owners for playing a major role in encouraging the violence. "They had vested interests in either camp of the political divide," a reporter with Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) said, adding that he and his colleagues wanted to tell the real story but they couldnt because the stories could portray the government in a bad light.
"We had beautiful clips and stories from the field, but we went back to the newsroom knowing that the story would never be used," he said.
Even privately owned media owners who backed different political parties had a hand in the stories that were carried. If it was about the party they supported, they exaggerated the story and generally depicted the opponents in negative ways.
"The media organizations refrained from telling
blamed lives the
world the truth about what was happening," Ochami told IPS. "There has been a tendency of portraying the Kenyan crisis as a problem between two ethnic groups -- where one [Kibakis Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odingas Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
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