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 blamed 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 lives 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 can’t 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 wasn’t 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 media’s 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 couldn’t 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 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 [Kibaki’s Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga’s Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained. There are those who believe the media is innocent and the violence currently rocking the country was bound to happen anyway -- that historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan communities had to boil over at some point in time. "The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was meant to explode whether the media encouraged it or not," said a journalist at the workshop. "Many people voted last year for change and it was a protest vote against years of inequalities. When they realized this would not happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they exploded." Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media consultant said one of the causes of Kenya’s unrest is the immaturity of its democracy. "There hasn’t been competitive democracy in our country. That is our problem," Odera told the participants at the workshop. The government was also blamed for the chaos because it slapped a blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence broke out in the country. "The ban did not extend to international media including the Internet which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. This led to skewed information and hence panic and more destruction and deaths," said one journalist from the electronic media. The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from all media organizations -- went to court this week to challenge the ban on broadcasters. Participants at the workshop also heard the first hand experiences of journalists who covered the post election violence. Practioners complained about threats to their lives and complained that they felt segregated from the rest of the country. As the workshop was taking place participants were well aware that several political writers and analysts had received death threats for writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable towards the government. (END/2008)
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 blamed 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 lives 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 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.
There are those who believe the media is innocent and the violence currently rocking the country was bound to happen anyway -- that historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan communities had to boil over at some point in time.
"The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was meant to explode whether the media encouraged it or not," said a journalist at the workshop. "Many people voted last year for change and it was a protest vote against years of inequalities. When they realized this would not happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they exploded."
Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media consultant said one of the causes of Kenyas unrest is the immaturity of its democracy. "There hasnt been competitive democracy in our country. That is our problem," Odera told the participants at the workshop.
The government was also blamed for the chaos because it slapped a blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence broke out in the country.
"The ban did not extend to international media including the Internet which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. This led to skewed information and hence panic and more destruction and deaths," said one journalist from the electronic media.
The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from all media organizations -- went to court this week to challenge the ban on broadcasters.
Participants at the workshop also heard the first hand experiences of journalists who covered the post election violence. Practioners complained about threats to their lives and complained that they felt segregated from the rest of the country.
As the workshop was taking place participants were well aware that several political writers and analysts had received death threats for writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable towards the government.
(END/2008)
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On Feb 12, 2008 12:48 PM, Kanja Waruru <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> wrote:
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.
While all Kenyans must reflect on what we could have done differently in the face of our current crisis, i would not hesitate to say that the media for a significant period of time, right from even before the referendum has not helped in many instances. Considering that media helps us to receive information and news coming from events where we are not present, honestly, media ought to play more non-partisan and objective roles. Its hard to ignore all the rumors of how certain media practitioners had been promised attractive appointments considering how news agendas were and continue to be set. 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.
I think one thing that the media must learn, is to accept correction. They have fought it in many cases using such terms as self-regulation... Remember once information has gone out through mass media, you cannot recall it and the best you can do is to publish an apology on small hidden column. The worst happens when the same information causes its recipients to act in ways that no one had envisaged.
Guys, Pardon me for joining the discussion rather late in the day. I do not think that blanket condemnation of the media is useful in moving the Country forward. I do agree with Kanja that we need to audit all the players in order to establish where the rain started beating us. More importantly, we need to ask ourselves as groups and as individuals what we can do so that our Country can never again find itself in such a bind. As a practising journalist and an editor, I can confirm that the mainstream media did alot in the way of self regulation. Many of the things that were available to us yet were never aired nor printed are indeed shocking. Let us not be quick to condemn the messenger. I think that by now, we all know that there are issues much deeper that the disputed presidential elections which the Country needs to address in a wholesome manner regards Farida ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kanja Waruru" <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> To: <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:48 AM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent 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 blamed 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 lives 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 can't 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 wasn't 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 media's 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 couldn't 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 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
There are those who believe the media is innocent and the violence currently rocking the country was bound to happen anyway -- that historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan communities had to boil over at some point in time.
"The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was meant to explode whether the media encouraged it or not," said a journalist at the workshop. "Many people voted last year for change and it was a protest vote against years of inequalities. When they realized this would not happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they exploded."
Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media consultant said one of the causes of Kenya's unrest is the immaturity of its democracy. "There hasn't been competitive democracy in our country. That is our problem," Odera told the participants at the workshop.
The government was also blamed for the chaos because it slapped a blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence broke out in the country.
"The ban did not extend to international media including the Internet which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. This led to skewed information and hence panic and more destruction and deaths," said one journalist from the electronic media.
The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from all media organizations -- went to court this week to challenge the ban on broadcasters.
Participants at the workshop also heard the first hand experiences of journalists who covered the post election violence. Practioners complained about threats to their lives and complained that they felt segregated from the rest of the country.
As the workshop was taking place participants were well aware that several political writers and analysts had received death threats for writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable towards the government.
(END/2008)
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Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the chase on how the media fueled the conflict. The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days before the election day. Editors must have known that it is no longer possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify the deaths of the APs especially because the accuracy of that rigging story was in doubt from the very moment it landed on the desk of the KTN/Standard Editor. The "messenger" must have known that the story was, other than being inaccurate, likely to ignite an explosive political confrontation. There are many other examples. The fact that politicians, ECK or church leaders may be guilty does not exonerate the Press so the issue of "not working in isolation" or being a powerless "messenger" does not arise. Hundreds of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands more are now homeless and property worth millions has been destroyed. The wounds inflicted on my country will take decades to heal. This is no longer an academic debate about Press Freedom or self regulation. Wainaina On Feb 13, 2008 3:59 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
Guys,
Pardon me for joining the discussion rather late in the day. I do not think that blanket condemnation of the media is useful in moving the Country forward.
I do agree with Kanja that we need to audit all the players in order to establish where the rain started beating us. More importantly, we need to ask ourselves as groups and as individuals what we can do so that our Country can never again find itself in such a bind.
As a practising journalist and an editor, I can confirm that the mainstream media did alot in the way of self regulation. Many of the things that were available to us yet were never aired nor printed are indeed shocking.
Let us not be quick to condemn the messenger. I think that by now, we all know that there are issues much deeper that the disputed presidential elections which the Country needs to address in a wholesome manner
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kanja Waruru" <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> To: <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:48 AM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
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 blamed 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 lives 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 can't 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 wasn't 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 media's 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 couldn't 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 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
There are those who believe the media is innocent and the violence currently rocking the country was bound to happen anyway -- that historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan communities had to boil over at some point in time.
"The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was meant to explode whether the media encouraged it or not," said a journalist at the workshop. "Many people voted last year for change and it was a protest vote against years of inequalities. When they realized this would not happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they exploded."
Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media consultant said one of the causes of Kenya's unrest is the immaturity of its democracy. "There hasn't been competitive democracy in our country. That is our problem," Odera told the participants at the workshop.
The government was also blamed for the chaos because it slapped a blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence broke out in the country.
"The ban did not extend to international media including the Internet which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. This led to skewed information and hence panic and more destruction and deaths," said one journalist from the electronic media.
The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from all media organizations -- went to court this week to challenge the ban on broadcasters.
Participants at the workshop also heard the first hand experiences of journalists who covered the post election violence. Practioners complained about threats to their lives and complained that they felt segregated from the rest of the country.
As the workshop was taking place participants were well aware that several political writers and analysts had received death threats for writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable towards the government.
(END/2008)
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Wainaina I personally authorised the story you are blaming KTN for and can vouch for the integrity of that report any time. If indeed you believe it is not possible to steal an election, how come that ballot boxes were found with lessos, and election materials in some polling stations? We cannot resolve explosive issues by hiding or supressing the truth, and no one is trying to exonerate the press. Let us not pretend that we do not know why we are where we are, it is definately not because of KTN or the Standard Group. And it is certainly not an academic excercise, afterall most of us do not have another place to call home except Kenya. Believe me, any Country which calls itself democratic must be able to live with a free press, no matter how much of a nuisance it is. By all means industry players need mechanisms to promote responsible behaviour in the media but aggression against media houses in light of the current political crisis is in my opinion misplaced. regards Farida ----- Original Message ----- From: Wainaina Mungai To: fkaroney@ktnkenya.com Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:53 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the chase on how the media fueled the conflict. The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days before the election day. Editors must have known that it is no longer possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify the deaths of the APs especially because the accuracy of that rigging story was in doubt from the very moment it landed on the desk of the KTN/Standard Editor. The "messenger" must have known that the story was, other than being inaccurate, likely to ignite an explosive political confrontation. There are many other examples. The fact that politicians, ECK or church leaders may be guilty does not exonerate the Press so the issue of "not working in isolation" or being a powerless "messenger" does not arise. Hundreds of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands more are now homeless and property worth millions has been destroyed. The wounds inflicted on my country will take decades to heal. This is no longer an academic debate about Press Freedom or self regulation. Wainaina On Feb 13, 2008 3:59 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote: Guys, Pardon me for joining the discussion rather late in the day. I do not think that blanket condemnation of the media is useful in moving the Country forward. I do agree with Kanja that we need to audit all the players in order to establish where the rain started beating us. More importantly, we need to ask ourselves as groups and as individuals what we can do so that our Country can never again find itself in such a bind. As a practising journalist and an editor, I can confirm that the mainstream media did alot in the way of self regulation. Many of the things that were available to us yet were never aired nor printed are indeed shocking. Let us not be quick to condemn the messenger. I think that by now, we all know that there are issues much deeper that the disputed presidential elections which the Country needs to address in a wholesome manner regards Farida ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kanja Waruru" <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> To: <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:48 AM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent 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 blamed > 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 lives > 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 can't > 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 wasn't 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 media's > 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 couldn't 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 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by > another [opposition > leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the > contrary is > downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained. > > There are those who believe the media is innocent > and the violence > currently rocking the country was bound to happen > anyway -- that > historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan > communities had to > boil over at some point in time. > > "The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was > meant to explode > whether the media encouraged it or not," said a > journalist at the > workshop. "Many people voted last year for change > and it was a protest > vote against years of inequalities. When they > realized this would not > happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they > exploded." > > Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media > consultant said one > of the causes of Kenya's unrest is the immaturity of > its democracy. > "There hasn't been competitive democracy in our > country. That is our > problem," Odera told the participants at the > workshop. > > The government was also blamed for the chaos because > it slapped a > blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence > broke out in the > country. > > "The ban did not extend to international media > including the Internet > which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. > This led to skewed > information and hence panic and more destruction and > deaths," said one > journalist from the electronic media. > > The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from > all media > organizations -- went to court this week to > challenge the ban on > broadcasters. > > Participants at the workshop also heard the first > hand experiences of > journalists who covered the post election violence. > Practioners > complained about threats to their lives and > complained that they felt > segregated from the rest of the country. > > As the workshop was taking place participants were > well aware that > several political writers and analysts had received > death threats for > writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable > towards the government. > > (END/2008) > > _______________________________________________ > kictanet mailing list > kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke > http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet > > This message was sent to: kanjawaruru@yahoo.com > === message truncated === ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! 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Thanks Farida, We should not consider the presence of lessos in ballot boxes in Kajiado or Kamukunji as evidence that your story was true. The pre-marking or ballots and the lesso story are what would be considered mutually exclusive events. The use of lessos as indicator of accuracy is at the very least speculative. The fact that [it is possible] for an election to be stolen does not mean that and election [will be] stolen. For KTN/Standard, the more direct issues as you vouch for the integrity of your story would be: 1. Did you have [evidence] that the ballot boxes were stuffed with pre-marked ballot papers? or were you speculating because someone came forward as a "witness"? 2. Do you believe that the killings of the Administration Police in Nyanza were a direct result of the story you authorised? If so, what have you done to at least console the families of the bereaved policemen? 3. Did you have evidence that the Citi Hoppa buses that were carrying APs to various parts of the country were meant to be used for a rigging mission? and would you consider that your story was responsible for the burning of Citi Hoppa buses? Most voters know that ballot boxes are checked before the start of voting and sealed infront of witnesses (agents, ECK officials etc). It is therefore unlikely that rigging would only take place is unless there is an elaborate conspiracy involving [all] officials/agents at a polling station. Overall, the "vibes" KTN/Standard fraternity must contend with is not that they are a model of "free press" but that it is biased against the government or pro-ODM. The vibes stations such as Royal Media, Kameme and KBC contend with is that they have given Kenyans reason to be seen as pro-government/PNU. Those are the issues the press must address honestly and not hide behind tags and clichés such as 'press freedom' and 'muzzling the press'. NOTE: I work for a competing media house but that is not my motivation for the issues i have raised on KTN/Standard. I respect journalists for the effort that goes into writing even the simplest story. However, I am aware that media houses and journalists have continued to allow their political and other biases to influence the way they report stories. Wainaina On Feb 14, 2008 12:09 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
Wainaina I personally authorised the story you are blaming KTN for and can vouch for the integrity of that report any time. If indeed you believe it is not possible to steal an election, how come that ballot boxes were found with lessos, and election materials in some polling stations?
We cannot resolve explosive issues by hiding or supressing the truth, and no one is trying to exonerate the press. Let us not pretend that we do not know why we are where we are, it is definately not because of KTN or the Standard Group.
And it is certainly not an academic excercise, afterall most of us do not have another place to call home except Kenya. Believe me, any Country which calls itself democratic must be able to live with a free press, no matter how much of a nuisance it is.
By all means industry players need mechanisms to promote responsible behaviour in the media but aggression against media houses in light of the current political crisis is in my opinion misplaced.
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- *From:* Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> *To:* fkaroney@ktnkenya.com *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:53 PM *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the chase on how the media fueled the conflict.
The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days before the election day. Editors must have known that it is no longer possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify the deaths of the APs especially because the accuracy of that rigging story was in doubt from the very moment it landed on the desk of the KTN/Standard Editor. The "messenger" must have known that the story was, other than being inaccurate, likely to ignite an explosive political confrontation. There are many other examples.
The fact that politicians, ECK or church leaders may be guilty does not exonerate the Press so the issue of "not working in isolation" or being a powerless "messenger" does not arise. Hundreds of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands more are now homeless and property worth millions has been destroyed. The wounds inflicted on my country will take decades to heal.
This is no longer an academic debate about Press Freedom or self regulation.
Wainaina
On Feb 13, 2008 3:59 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
Guys,
Pardon me for joining the discussion rather late in the day. I do not think that blanket condemnation of the media is useful in moving the Country forward.
I do agree with Kanja that we need to audit all the players in order to establish where the rain started beating us. More importantly, we need to ask ourselves as groups and as individuals what we can do so that our Country can never again find itself in such a bind.
As a practising journalist and an editor, I can confirm that the mainstream media did alot in the way of self regulation. Many of the things that were available to us yet were never aired nor printed are indeed shocking.
Let us not be quick to condemn the messenger. I think that by now, we all know that there are issues much deeper that the disputed presidential elections which the Country needs to address in a wholesome manner
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kanja Waruru" <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> To: <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:48 AM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
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 blamed 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 lives 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 can't 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 wasn't 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 media's 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 couldn't 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 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
There are those who believe the media is innocent and the violence currently rocking the country was bound to happen anyway -- that historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan communities had to boil over at some point in time.
"The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was meant to explode whether the media encouraged it or not," said a journalist at the workshop. "Many people voted last year for change and it was a protest vote against years of inequalities. When they realized this would not happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they exploded."
Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media consultant said one of the causes of Kenya's unrest is the immaturity of its democracy. "There hasn't been competitive democracy in our country. That is our problem," Odera told the participants at the workshop.
The government was also blamed for the chaos because it slapped a blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence broke out in the country.
"The ban did not extend to international media including the Internet which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. This led to skewed information and hence panic and more destruction and deaths," said one journalist from the electronic media.
The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from all media organizations -- went to court this week to challenge the ban on broadcasters.
Participants at the workshop also heard the first hand experiences of journalists who covered the post election violence. Practioners complained about threats to their lives and complained that they felt segregated from the rest of the country.
As the workshop was taking place participants were well aware that several political writers and analysts had received death threats for writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable towards the government.
(END/2008)
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Allow me to re-deflect the issue away from a specific media house and state the following as a way forward: 1. Journalists must work with all Kenyans to make the press free from undue influence from Media Owners. Press Freedom will not be achieved until we liberate the journalists from the editorial biases of the media owners. 2. Editors must be held responsible when media houses publish/broadcast in an unethical manner. For this to hold, we must ensure that the media owners are not the 'final' editors. 3. Journalists/reporters have developed a culture of accepting inducements in order to edit stories as requested. This must be treated as a crime due to the privileges society accords the press. 4. Media houses must employ and retrain qualified and ethical staff. There must be standards that ensure professionalism. Engineers, Doctors and others submit to standards that the media continues to dodge. 5. Kenya needs a Media Council "with teeth"...that will be a watchdog that acts in the interest of the public not as a affiliate lobby for Media Owners. The verdict should be a clear message to all of us in the media circles. It's time to look inwards and liberate the profession of journalism from the businessmen who own the media houses. Wainaina On 2/13/08, Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Farida,
We should not consider the presence of lessos in ballot boxes in Kajiado or Kamukunji as evidence that your story was true. The pre-marking or ballots and the lesso story are what would be considered mutually exclusive events. The use of lessos as indicator of accuracy is at the very least speculative. The fact that [it is possible] for an election to be stolen does not mean that and election [will be] stolen.
For KTN/Standard, the more direct issues as you vouch for the integrity of your story would be:
1. Did you have [evidence] that the ballot boxes were stuffed with pre-marked ballot papers? or were you speculating because someone came forward as a "witness"?
2. Do you believe that the killings of the Administration Police in Nyanza were a direct result of the story you authorised? If so, what have you done to at least console the families of the bereaved policemen?
3. Did you have evidence that the Citi Hoppa buses that were carrying APs to various parts of the country were meant to be used for a rigging mission? and would you consider that your story was responsible for the burning of Citi Hoppa buses?
Most voters know that ballot boxes are checked before the start of voting and sealed infront of witnesses (agents, ECK officials etc). It is therefore unlikely that rigging would only take place is unless there is an elaborate conspiracy involving [all] officials/agents at a polling station.
Overall, the "vibes" KTN/Standard fraternity must contend with is not that they are a model of "free press" but that it is biased against the government or pro-ODM. The vibes stations such as Royal Media, Kameme and KBC contend with is that they have given Kenyans reason to be seen as pro-government/PNU. Those are the issues the press must address honestly and not hide behind tags and clichés such as 'press freedom' and 'muzzling the press'.
NOTE: I work for a competing media house but that is not my motivation for the issues i have raised on KTN/Standard. I respect journalists for the effort that goes into writing even the simplest story. However, I am aware that media houses and journalists have continued to allow their political and other biases to influence the way they report stories.
Wainaina
On Feb 14, 2008 12:09 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
Wainaina I personally authorised the story you are blaming KTN for and can vouch for the integrity of that report any time. If indeed you believe it is not possible to steal an election, how come that ballot boxes were found with lessos, and election materials in some polling stations?
We cannot resolve explosive issues by hiding or supressing the truth, and no one is trying to exonerate the press. Let us not pretend that we do not know why we are where we are, it is definately not because of KTN or the Standard Group.
And it is certainly not an academic excercise, afterall most of us do not have another place to call home except Kenya. Believe me, any Country which calls itself democratic must be able to live with a free press, no matter how much of a nuisance it is.
By all means industry players need mechanisms to promote responsible behaviour in the media but aggression against media houses in light of the current political crisis is in my opinion misplaced.
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- *From:* Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> *To:* fkaroney@ktnkenya.com *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:53 PM *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the chase on how the media fueled the conflict.
The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days before the election day. Editors must have known that it is no longer possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify the deaths of the APs especially because the accuracy of that rigging story was in doubt from the very moment it landed on the desk of the KTN/Standard Editor. The "messenger" must have known that the story was, other than being inaccurate, likely to ignite an explosive political confrontation. There are many other examples.
The fact that politicians, ECK or church leaders may be guilty does not exonerate the Press so the issue of "not working in isolation" or being a powerless "messenger" does not arise. Hundreds of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands more are now homeless and property worth millions has been destroyed. The wounds inflicted on my country will take decades to heal.
This is no longer an academic debate about Press Freedom or self regulation.
Wainaina
On Feb 13, 2008 3:59 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
Guys,
Pardon me for joining the discussion rather late in the day. I do not think that blanket condemnation of the media is useful in moving the Country forward.
I do agree with Kanja that we need to audit all the players in order to establish where the rain started beating us. More importantly, we need to ask ourselves as groups and as individuals what we can do so that our Country can never again find itself in such a bind.
As a practising journalist and an editor, I can confirm that the mainstream media did alot in the way of self regulation. Many of the things that were available to us yet were never aired nor printed are indeed shocking.
Let us not be quick to condemn the messenger. I think that by now, we all know that there are issues much deeper that the disputed presidential elections which the Country needs to address in a wholesome manner
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kanja Waruru" <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> To: <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:48 AM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
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 blamed 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 lives 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 can't 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 wasn't 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 media's 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 couldn't 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 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
There are those who believe the media is innocent and the violence currently rocking the country was bound to happen anyway -- that historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan communities had to boil over at some point in time.
"The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was meant to explode whether the media encouraged it or not," said a journalist at the workshop. "Many people voted last year for change and it was a protest vote against years of inequalities. When they realized this would not happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they exploded."
Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media consultant said one of the causes of Kenya's unrest is the immaturity of its democracy. "There hasn't been competitive democracy in our country. That is our problem," Odera told the participants at the workshop.
The government was also blamed for the chaos because it slapped a blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence broke out in the country.
"The ban did not extend to international media including the Internet which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. This led to skewed information and hence panic and more destruction and deaths," said one journalist from the electronic media.
The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from all media organizations -- went to court this week to challenge the ban on broadcasters.
Participants at the workshop also heard the first hand experiences of journalists who covered the post election violence. Practioners complained about threats to their lives and complained that they felt segregated from the rest of the country.
As the workshop was taking place participants were well aware that several political writers and analysts had received death threats for writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable towards the government.
(END/2008)
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hi all, i like mungai's line of thought and i would like to contribute an additional point. for media houses to be transparent during elections the media council should insist that each media house state their position's publicly and declare the parties/presidential candidates that they support/endorse or if they intend to remain neutral and independent. this way the public will be making informed decision when they tune/buy into a particular media. Kanja --- Wainaina Mungai <wainaina@madeinkenya.org> wrote:
Allow me to re-deflect the issue away from a specific media house and state the following as a way forward:
1. Journalists must work with all Kenyans to make the press free from undue influence from Media Owners. Press Freedom will not be achieved until we liberate the journalists from the editorial biases of the media owners.
2. Editors must be held responsible when media houses publish/broadcast in an unethical manner. For this to hold, we must ensure that the media owners are not the 'final' editors.
3. Journalists/reporters have developed a culture of accepting inducements in order to edit stories as requested. This must be treated as a crime due to the privileges society accords the press.
4. Media houses must employ and retrain qualified and ethical staff. There must be standards that ensure professionalism. Engineers, Doctors and others submit to standards that the media continues to dodge.
5. Kenya needs a Media Council "with teeth"...that will be a watchdog that acts in the interest of the public not as a affiliate lobby for Media Owners.
The verdict should be a clear message to all of us in the media circles. It's time to look inwards and liberate the profession of journalism from the businessmen who own the media houses.
Wainaina
On 2/13/08, Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Farida,
We should not consider the presence of lessos in
or Kamukunji as evidence that your story was true. The pre-marking or ballots and the lesso story are what would be considered mutually exclusive events. The use of lessos as indicator of accuracy is at the very least speculative. The fact that [it is possible] for an election to be stolen does not mean that and election [will be] stolen.
For KTN/Standard, the more direct issues as you vouch for the integrity of your story would be:
1. Did you have [evidence] that the ballot boxes were stuffed with pre-marked ballot papers? or were you speculating because someone came forward as a "witness"?
2. Do you believe that the killings of the Administration Police in Nyanza were a direct result of the story you authorised? If so, what have you done to at least console the families of the bereaved
ballot boxes in Kajiado policemen?
3. Did you have evidence that the Citi Hoppa buses
to various parts of the country were meant to be used for a rigging mission? and would you consider that your story was responsible for the burning of Citi Hoppa buses?
Most voters know that ballot boxes are checked before the start of voting and sealed infront of witnesses (agents, ECK officials etc). It is therefore unlikely that rigging would only take
elaborate conspiracy involving [all] officials/agents at a polling station.
Overall, the "vibes" KTN/Standard fraternity must contend with is not that they are a model of "free press" but that it is biased against the government or pro-ODM. The vibes stations such as Royal Media, Kameme and KBC contend with is that they have given Kenyans reason to be seen as pro-government/PNU. Those are the issues the press must address honestly and not hide behind tags and clichés such as 'press freedom' and 'muzzling the press'.
NOTE: I work for a competing media house but that is not my motivation for the issues i have raised on KTN/Standard. I respect journalists for the effort that goes into writing even the simplest story. However, I am aware that media houses and journalists have continued to allow their political and other biases to influence the way they report stories.
Wainaina
On Feb 14, 2008 12:09 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
Wainaina I personally authorised the story you are blaming KTN for and can vouch for the integrity of that report any time. If indeed you believe it is not possible to steal an election, how come that ballot boxes were found with lessos, and election materials in some polling stations?
We cannot resolve explosive issues by hiding or supressing the truth, and no one is trying to exonerate the press. Let us not pretend that we do not know why we are where we are, it is definately not because of KTN or the Standard Group.
And it is certainly not an academic excercise, afterall most of us do not have another place to call home except Kenya. Believe me, any Country which calls itself democratic must be able to
matter how much of a nuisance it is.
By all means industry players need mechanisms to
behaviour in the media but aggression against media houses in light of the current political crisis is in my opinion misplaced.
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- *From:* Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> *To:* fkaroney@ktnkenya.com *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:53 PM *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the chase on how the media fueled the conflict.
The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days before the election day. Editors must have known
possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify
that were carrying APs place is unless there is an live with a free press, no promote responsible that it is no longer the deaths of the APs
especially because the accuracy of that rigging story === message truncated ===>
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Kenyans and Friends of Kenya The Media shuldnt have media council. The media must go the way of the SA broadcast complaints commision which must be independent of the media and the gvernment. And guys and especially Wainaina. Please dont bring the PNU vs ODM politics in this forum. We are going to that direction and it wont help us. Lets all know that KTN has a duty to inform people just the way Royal Media and KBC and the Kameme 24 has been sending Kikuyu enthnic chauvinism in our ears. We have situations in this country where even Redcross and IOM have been called and informed by the government not to transport some IDPs. Please know that Kenya cant be in an imagined peace state. And peace exist only where justice is. Even if Raila and Kibaki agrees know that thre will be no peace without the people's right protected. Alai On Feb 13, 2008 2:49 PM, Kanja Waruru <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> wrote:
hi all, i like mungai's line of thought and i would like to contribute an additional point.
for media houses to be transparent during elections the media council should insist that each media house state their position's publicly and declare the parties/presidential candidates that they support/endorse or if they intend to remain neutral and independent.
this way the public will be making informed decision when they tune/buy into a particular media. Kanja
--- Wainaina Mungai <wainaina@madeinkenya.org> wrote:
Allow me to re-deflect the issue away from a specific media house and state the following as a way forward:
1. Journalists must work with all Kenyans to make the press free from undue influence from Media Owners. Press Freedom will not be achieved until we liberate the journalists from the editorial biases of the media owners.
2. Editors must be held responsible when media houses publish/broadcast in an unethical manner. For this to hold, we must ensure that the media owners are not the 'final' editors.
3. Journalists/reporters have developed a culture of accepting inducements in order to edit stories as requested. This must be treated as a crime due to the privileges society accords the press.
4. Media houses must employ and retrain qualified and ethical staff. There must be standards that ensure professionalism. Engineers, Doctors and others submit to standards that the media continues to dodge.
5. Kenya needs a Media Council "with teeth"...that will be a watchdog that acts in the interest of the public not as a affiliate lobby for Media Owners.
The verdict should be a clear message to all of us in the media circles. It's time to look inwards and liberate the profession of journalism from the businessmen who own the media houses.
Wainaina
On 2/13/08, Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Farida,
We should not consider the presence of lessos in
or Kamukunji as evidence that your story was true. The pre-marking or ballots and the lesso story are what would be considered mutually exclusive events. The use of lessos as indicator of accuracy is at the very least speculative. The fact that [it is possible] for an election to be stolen does not mean that and election [will be] stolen.
For KTN/Standard, the more direct issues as you vouch for the integrity of your story would be:
1. Did you have [evidence] that the ballot boxes were stuffed with pre-marked ballot papers? or were you speculating because someone came forward as a "witness"?
2. Do you believe that the killings of the Administration Police in Nyanza were a direct result of the story you authorised? If so, what have you done to at least console the families of the bereaved
ballot boxes in Kajiado policemen?
3. Did you have evidence that the Citi Hoppa buses
to various parts of the country were meant to be used for a rigging mission? and would you consider that your story was responsible for the burning of Citi Hoppa buses?
Most voters know that ballot boxes are checked before the start of voting and sealed infront of witnesses (agents, ECK officials etc). It is therefore unlikely that rigging would only take
elaborate conspiracy involving [all] officials/agents at a polling station.
Overall, the "vibes" KTN/Standard fraternity must contend with is not that they are a model of "free press" but that it is biased against the government or pro-ODM. The vibes stations such as Royal Media, Kameme and KBC contend with is that they have given Kenyans reason to be seen as pro-government/PNU. Those are the issues the press must address honestly and not hide behind tags and clichés such as 'press freedom' and 'muzzling the press'.
NOTE: I work for a competing media house but that is not my motivation for the issues i have raised on KTN/Standard. I respect journalists for the effort that goes into writing even the simplest story. However, I am aware that media houses and journalists have continued to allow their political and other biases to influence the way they report stories.
Wainaina
On Feb 14, 2008 12:09 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
Wainaina I personally authorised the story you are blaming KTN for and can vouch for the integrity of that report any time. If indeed you believe it is not possible to steal an election, how come that ballot boxes were found with lessos, and election materials in some polling stations?
We cannot resolve explosive issues by hiding or supressing the truth, and no one is trying to exonerate the press. Let us not pretend that we do not know why we are where we are, it is definately not because of KTN or the Standard Group.
And it is certainly not an academic excercise, afterall most of us do not have another place to call home except Kenya. Believe me, any Country which calls itself democratic must be able to
matter how much of a nuisance it is.
By all means industry players need mechanisms to
behaviour in the media but aggression against media houses in light of the current political crisis is in my opinion misplaced.
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- *From:* Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> *To:* fkaroney@ktnkenya.com *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:53 PM *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the chase on how the media fueled the conflict.
The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days before the election day. Editors must have known
possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify
that were carrying APs place is unless there is an live with a free press, no promote responsible that it is no longer the deaths of the APs
especially because the accuracy of that rigging story === message truncated ===>
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I believe Waruru has raised an important question especially as relates to .....should Media houses be partisan? or must Media houses remain neutral independent of the preference of their owners? My take is that Media is too critical as a part of society that it must not be partisan. We call the Press the "Fourth Estate" and we should make the press non-partisan just as we require the judiciary or other statutory bodies to be non-partisan even though the individuals running those institutions may be free to support different political leanings. Dear Alai, let's all admit we have erred no matter what party or ideology we support. The political bias of the media is the problem we turn our focus to as it has brought us to the crisis we find ourselves in. My example of KTN/Standard also pointed out that other media houses (the same that you mentioned), have to deal with the fact that they are perceived as partisan in favour of the establishment. I also chose to deflect the debate to "way forward". Please let us not trivialise it as a matter of tribal chauvinism coz we will lose sight of the issues at hand. Let's work together for a win-win solution. I would like to venture into analysing the role of SMS and the Internet but that would divert my atention from the unsolved problem of a Media that can destroy Kenya if left untempered. On 2/13/08, Robert Alai <alai.robert@gmail.com> wrote:
Kenyans and Friends of Kenya
The Media shuldnt have media council. The media must go the way of the SA broadcast complaints commision which must be independent of the media and the gvernment. And guys and especially Wainaina. Please dont bring the PNU vs ODM politics in this forum. We are going to that direction and it wont help us. Lets all know that KTN has a duty to inform people just the way Royal Media and KBC and the Kameme 24 has been sending Kikuyu enthnic chauvinism in our ears. We have situations in this country where even Redcross and IOM have been called and informed by the government not to transport some IDPs. Please know that Kenya cant be in an imagined peace state. And peace exist only where justice is. Even if Raila and Kibaki agrees know that thre will be no peace without the people's right protected.
Alai
On Feb 13, 2008 2:49 PM, Kanja Waruru <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> wrote:
hi all, i like mungai's line of thought and i would like to contribute an additional point.
for media houses to be transparent during elections the media council should insist that each media house state their position's publicly and declare the parties/presidential candidates that they support/endorse or if they intend to remain neutral and independent.
this way the public will be making informed decision when they tune/buy into a particular media. Kanja
--- Wainaina Mungai <wainaina@madeinkenya.org> wrote:
Allow me to re-deflect the issue away from a specific media house and state the following as a way forward:
1. Journalists must work with all Kenyans to make the press free from undue influence from Media Owners. Press Freedom will not be achieved until we liberate the journalists from the editorial biases of the media owners.
2. Editors must be held responsible when media houses publish/broadcast in an unethical manner. For this to hold, we must ensure that the media owners are not the 'final' editors.
3. Journalists/reporters have developed a culture of accepting inducements in order to edit stories as requested. This must be treated as a crime due to the privileges society accords the press.
4. Media houses must employ and retrain qualified and ethical staff. There must be standards that ensure professionalism. Engineers, Doctors and others submit to standards that the media continues to dodge.
5. Kenya needs a Media Council "with teeth"...that will be a watchdog that acts in the interest of the public not as a affiliate lobby for Media Owners.
The verdict should be a clear message to all of us in the media circles. It's time to look inwards and liberate the profession of journalism from the businessmen who own the media houses.
Wainaina
On 2/13/08, Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Farida,
We should not consider the presence of lessos in
or Kamukunji as evidence that your story was true. The pre-marking or ballots and the lesso story are what would be considered mutually exclusive events. The use of lessos as indicator of accuracy is at the very least speculative. The fact that [it is possible] for an election to be stolen does not mean that and election [will be] stolen.
For KTN/Standard, the more direct issues as you vouch for the integrity of your story would be:
1. Did you have [evidence] that the ballot boxes were stuffed with pre-marked ballot papers? or were you speculating because someone came forward as a "witness"?
2. Do you believe that the killings of the Administration Police in Nyanza were a direct result of the story you authorised? If so, what have you done to at least console the families of the bereaved
ballot boxes in Kajiado policemen?
3. Did you have evidence that the Citi Hoppa buses
to various parts of the country were meant to be used for a rigging mission? and would you consider that your story was responsible for the burning of Citi Hoppa buses?
Most voters know that ballot boxes are checked before the start of voting and sealed infront of witnesses (agents, ECK officials etc). It is therefore unlikely that rigging would only take
elaborate conspiracy involving [all] officials/agents at a polling station.
Overall, the "vibes" KTN/Standard fraternity must contend with is not that they are a model of "free press" but that it is biased against the government or pro-ODM. The vibes stations such as Royal Media, Kameme and KBC contend with is that they have given Kenyans reason to be seen as pro-government/PNU. Those are the issues the press must address honestly and not hide behind tags and clichés such as 'press freedom' and 'muzzling the press'.
NOTE: I work for a competing media house but that is not my motivation for the issues i have raised on KTN/Standard. I respect journalists for the effort that goes into writing even the simplest story. However, I am aware that media houses and journalists have continued to allow their political and other biases to influence the way they report stories.
Wainaina
On Feb 14, 2008 12:09 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
Wainaina I personally authorised the story you are blaming KTN for and can vouch for the integrity of that report any time. If indeed you believe it is not possible to steal an election, how come that ballot boxes were found with lessos, and election materials in some polling stations?
We cannot resolve explosive issues by hiding or supressing the truth, and no one is trying to exonerate the press. Let us not pretend that we do not know why we are where we are, it is definately not because of KTN or the Standard Group.
And it is certainly not an academic excercise, afterall most of us do not have another place to call home except Kenya. Believe me, any Country which calls itself democratic must be able to
matter how much of a nuisance it is.
By all means industry players need mechanisms to
behaviour in the media but aggression against media houses in light of the current political crisis is in my opinion misplaced.
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- *From:* Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> *To:* fkaroney@ktnkenya.com *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:53 PM *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the chase on how the media fueled the conflict.
The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days before the election day. Editors must have known
possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify
that were carrying APs place is unless there is an live with a free press, no promote responsible that it is no longer the deaths of the APs
especially because the accuracy of that rigging story === message truncated ===>
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Wainaina This is funny. On one hand you are describing how KTN/Standard did incite the public and ignore the fact that All Royal Media outlets including RamogiFM, Kameme, and KBC have gone to become Kikuyu chauvinist and not ready to protect the interest of Kenya. On another hand you claim ho the current Kenyan problem is political. *THE PROBLEM IS NOT POLITICAL BUT ETHNIC. *I have just come from a tour which took me from Tigoni, Juja, Nyeri, Naivasha, Eldoret, Kisumu, Yala and Busia. I travelled with the IDPs and listened and cried of what I heard. Kenyans are being denied their rights because they are not Kikuyu. I have the word of MPs and confirmed with IOM that the government explicitly informed the Redcross and IOM not to serve some communities. I have horror tales of women whose husbands were hacked with pangas inside Tigoni police station and the police couldnt save because they are not Kikuyu. I have talked to Abbas of IOM of how different Redcross is treating IDPs. kikuyu IDPs are treated with all care and others ignored. I personally snatched blankets from Pamela who is the regional redcross manager in Kisumu when she refused to give them to mothers and chidren I transported from tigoni and naivasha. I brought 17 buses and called redcross and informed them of my mission. I had a meeting with Dr Simiyu and Abbas Guled and they agreed to prepare the ground. After a whole day travel I got redcross not ready and when they saw the buses is when they started cutting the mbogas and meat. We handed over 4 children whose mother was admitted to Agha khan with serious illness and redcross took the children to a police station in Siaya. Kenyan problem is tribal and not political. We cannot have one tribe running roughshod and even the religious leaders from Kikuyu preaching the Kikuyu superiority. We cannot have one tribe killing and maiming Kenyans while claiming there is a genocide against Kikuyus. No Kikuyu was killed in Kisumu. Infact they were protected and even I have Mwangi, and Kuria who are my friends living and working in Kisumu even now when they cant work anywhere else. But Kibaki is ordering NGOs not to serve non Kikuyus. Kikuyus enjoy greater access to loans and even humanitarian assistance. Go to Kondele in Kisumu where the Kikuyu IDPs are housed. You will find that there is a bigger difference with Moi stadium where redcross dont want to even put basic facilities forcing the local community in Kisumu to house the IDPs at St Stephens. kenyans, these theories of Bitange and Wainaina only works for the few they serve. Bitange was key in selling 51percent shares of Telkom Kenya to the french consortium at 26 Billion Ksh. Before that the government cleared a debt of 69 billion. if 51% shares were sold at 26 it menas that Telkom Kenya was just worht 52 Billion. Why settle a debt of 69 billion? What is the mathematics here? telkom Kenya was worthless? Shame on you Bitange. Only people who dont know your inner dealings will respect what you say. You really like to please masters and never acts proffesionaly. Alai On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Wainaina Mungai <wainaina@madeinkenya.org> wrote:
I believe Waruru has raised an important question especially as relates to .....should Media houses be partisan? or must Media houses remain neutral independent of the preference of their owners?
My take is that Media is too critical as a part of society that it must not be partisan. We call the Press the "Fourth Estate" and we should make the press non-partisan just as we require the judiciary or other statutory bodies to be non-partisan even though the individuals running those institutions may be free to support different political leanings.
Dear Alai, let's all admit we have erred no matter what party or ideology we support. The political bias of the media is the problem we turn our focus to as it has brought us to the crisis we find ourselves in. My example of KTN/Standard also pointed out that other media houses (the same that you mentioned), have to deal with the fact that they are perceived as partisan in favour of the establishment. I also chose to deflect the debate to "way forward". Please let us not trivialise it as a matter of tribal chauvinism coz we will lose sight of the issues at hand. Let's work together for a win-win solution.
I would like to venture into analysing the role of SMS and the Internet but that would divert my atention from the unsolved problem of a Media that can destroy Kenya if left untempered.
On 2/13/08, Robert Alai <alai.robert@gmail.com> wrote:
Kenyans and Friends of Kenya
The Media shuldnt have media council. The media must go the way of the SA broadcast complaints commision which must be independent of the media and the gvernment. And guys and especially Wainaina. Please dont bring the PNU vs ODM politics in this forum. We are going to that direction and it wont help us. Lets all know that KTN has a duty to inform people just the way Royal Media and KBC and the Kameme 24 has been sending Kikuyu enthnic chauvinism in our ears. We have situations in this country where even Redcross and IOM have been called and informed by the government not to transport some IDPs. Please know that Kenya cant be in an imagined peace state. And peace exist only where justice is. Even if Raila and Kibaki agrees know that thre will be no peace without the people's right protected.
Alai
On Feb 13, 2008 2:49 PM, Kanja Waruru <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> wrote:
hi all, i like mungai's line of thought and i would like to contribute an additional point.
for media houses to be transparent during elections the media council should insist that each media house state their position's publicly and declare the parties/presidential candidates that they support/endorse or if they intend to remain neutral and independent.
this way the public will be making informed decision when they tune/buy into a particular media. Kanja
--- Wainaina Mungai <wainaina@madeinkenya.org> wrote:
Allow me to re-deflect the issue away from a specific media house and state the following as a way forward:
1. Journalists must work with all Kenyans to make the press free from undue influence from Media Owners. Press Freedom will not be achieved until we liberate the journalists from the editorial biases of the media owners.
2. Editors must be held responsible when media houses publish/broadcast in an unethical manner. For this to hold, we must ensure that the media owners are not the 'final' editors.
3. Journalists/reporters have developed a culture of accepting inducements in order to edit stories as requested. This must be treated as a crime due to the privileges society accords the press.
4. Media houses must employ and retrain qualified and ethical staff. There must be standards that ensure professionalism. Engineers, Doctors and others submit to standards that the media continues to dodge.
5. Kenya needs a Media Council "with teeth"...that will be a watchdog that acts in the interest of the public not as a affiliate lobby for Media Owners.
The verdict should be a clear message to all of us in the media circles. It's time to look inwards and liberate the profession of journalism from the businessmen who own the media houses.
Wainaina
On 2/13/08, Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Farida,
We should not consider the presence of lessos in
or Kamukunji as evidence that your story was true. The pre-marking or ballots and the lesso story are what would be considered mutually exclusive events. The use of lessos as indicator of accuracy is at the very least speculative. The fact that [it is possible] for an election to be stolen does not mean that and election [will be] stolen.
For KTN/Standard, the more direct issues as you vouch for the integrity of your story would be:
1. Did you have [evidence] that the ballot boxes were stuffed with pre-marked ballot papers? or were you speculating because someone came forward as a "witness"?
2. Do you believe that the killings of the Administration Police in Nyanza were a direct result of the story you authorised? If so, what have you done to at least console the families of the bereaved
ballot boxes in Kajiado policemen?
3. Did you have evidence that the Citi Hoppa buses
to various parts of the country were meant to be used for a rigging mission? and would you consider that your story was responsible for the burning of Citi Hoppa buses?
Most voters know that ballot boxes are checked before the start of voting and sealed infront of witnesses (agents, ECK officials etc). It is therefore unlikely that rigging would only take
elaborate conspiracy involving [all] officials/agents at a polling station.
Overall, the "vibes" KTN/Standard fraternity must contend with is not that they are a model of "free press" but that it is biased against the government or pro-ODM. The vibes stations such as Royal Media, Kameme and KBC contend with is that they have given Kenyans reason to be seen as pro-government/PNU. Those are the issues the press must address honestly and not hide behind tags and clichés such as 'press freedom' and 'muzzling the press'.
NOTE: I work for a competing media house but that is not my motivation for the issues i have raised on KTN/Standard. I respect journalists for the effort that goes into writing even the simplest story. However, I am aware that media houses and journalists have continued to allow their political and other biases to influence the way they report stories.
Wainaina
On Feb 14, 2008 12:09 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
Wainaina I personally authorised the story you are blaming KTN for and can vouch for the integrity of that report any time. If indeed you believe it is not possible to steal an election, how come that ballot boxes were found with lessos, and election materials in some polling stations?
We cannot resolve explosive issues by hiding or supressing the truth, and no one is trying to exonerate the press. Let us not pretend that we do not know why we are where we are, it is definately not because of KTN or the Standard Group.
And it is certainly not an academic excercise, afterall most of us do not have another place to call home except Kenya. Believe me, any Country which calls itself democratic must be able to
matter how much of a nuisance it is.
By all means industry players need mechanisms to
behaviour in the media but aggression against media houses in light of the current political crisis is in my opinion misplaced.
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- *From:* Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> *To:* fkaroney@ktnkenya.com *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:53 PM *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the chase on how the media fueled the conflict.
The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days before the election day. Editors must have known
possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify
that were carrying APs place is unless there is an live with a free press, no promote responsible that it is no longer the deaths of the APs
especially because the accuracy of that rigging story === message truncated ===>
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Alai: I believe that we are past passionate tribal accusations and now at the audit of the harm done by media and related actors stage. All media outlets including stations you have left out will be audited. It would be incomplete to leave out new media; blogs, sms, and public mailing lists because this is where raw hate was continually spewed to incite innocent vulnerable people to turn on their best friends. The sources will be indisputably very clear. Bw. PS reiterated that he only wants us to agree on the form because the audit is a must to avoid going this route ever again. on 21 May 2007, I sent a message to kictanet refereing to http://www.yle.fi/ripe/Papers/Brants_Bardoel.pdf "Death Duties: Kelly, Fortuyn, and the challenge to media governance" --excerpts-- "(t)he press is immensely competitive ( ) As a result of this ( ), I dont feel the media report the news. They only report the news through a prism of sensation, scandal and confrontation. The news as such is not sufficiently interesting. Alastair Campbell, the former spokesman of Britains Prime Minister Tony Blair, blamed the BBC for taking a one-way road to cynicism. When it dominates most judgements, the medias dominant role becomes the erosion of confidence in politics The press serves as a watchdog for democracy, but a watchdog that barks too often is useless. An information channel that distorts the information fulfils no function. In any other sector where the product is so vital for society and the risk of a loss of quality so great, the government would have intervened. The principle of press freedom makes this impossible. Consequently this is a task for the press itself, given the potential danger and social harm of media that behave as a political actor without showing accountability(Donner 2004; our translation KB&JB). We have turned politics into a media circus. He who looks attractive and formulates well can count on our attention, but we cut their heads off when they disappoint us (translation ours KB&JB). On the basis of a comparative case study of two critical events in two different countries the Kelly suicide case in the UK and the subsequent debate about the BBCs role and responsibility, and the Fortuyn murder in the Netherlands and the subsequent debate about the lack of TVs responsiveness and accountability - the paper analyses the political, institutional and professional responses, the similarity and difference in the mechanisms proposed to reinvigorate trust, and how, in such different political and media systems, broadcasting organisations and journalists come to terms with responsibility and accountability on the one hand and professional freedom and autonomy on the other." The legitimacy of legally entrusting public media and professionally entrusting journalists with the power to define reality and interpret meaning, is based on reciprocity, on trusting media and journalists to dutifully and reliably live up to public expectations. Trust that they aim at truth finding, at balanced and pluralist reporting, at independence from political and economic influence, at a sense of social responsibility as well as responsiveness to society, at their watchdog role being in the public interest and not personally or economically inspired, etc. That trust built on and earned by socially responsible behaviour - is being challenged, while it is exactly in situations of uncertainty that trust is necessary (Luhmann, 1989). I really recommend reading this short 20-page paper and see how the media changed a government and caused death. -------- To Kanja's list could we also add; - Critical review of media houses Editorial Policies and if they reflect (Re)public interests? - International media prejudices... Alex --- Robert Alai <alai.robert@gmail.com> wrote:
Wainaina
This is funny. On one hand you are describing how KTN/Standard did incite the public and ignore the fact that All Royal Media outlets including RamogiFM, Kameme, and KBC have gone to become Kikuyu chauvinist and not ready to protect the interest of Kenya. On another hand you claim ho the current Kenyan problem is political. *THE PROBLEM IS NOT POLITICAL BUT ETHNIC. *I have just come from a tour which took me from Tigoni, Juja, Nyeri, Naivasha, Eldoret, Kisumu, Yala and Busia. I travelled with the IDPs and listened and cried of what I heard. Kenyans are being denied their rights because they are not Kikuyu. I have the word of MPs and confirmed with IOM that the government explicitly informed the Redcross and IOM not to serve some communities. I have horror tales of women whose husbands were hacked with pangas inside Tigoni police station and the police couldnt save because they are not Kikuyu. I have talked to Abbas of IOM of how different Redcross is treating IDPs. kikuyu IDPs are treated with all care and others ignored. I personally snatched blankets from Pamela who is the regional redcross manager in Kisumu when she refused to give them to mothers and chidren I transported from tigoni and naivasha. I brought 17 buses and called redcross and informed them of my mission. I had a meeting with Dr Simiyu and Abbas Guled and they agreed to prepare the ground. After a whole day travel I got redcross not ready and when they saw the buses is when they started cutting the mbogas and meat. We handed over 4 children whose mother was admitted to Agha khan with serious illness and redcross took the children to a police station in Siaya.
Kenyan problem is tribal and not political. We cannot have one tribe running roughshod and even the religious leaders from Kikuyu preaching the Kikuyu superiority. We cannot have one tribe killing and maiming Kenyans while claiming there is a genocide against Kikuyus. No Kikuyu was killed in Kisumu. Infact they were protected and even I have Mwangi, and Kuria who are my friends living and working in Kisumu even now when they cant work anywhere else. But Kibaki is ordering NGOs not to serve non Kikuyus. Kikuyus enjoy greater access to loans and even humanitarian assistance. Go to Kondele in Kisumu where the Kikuyu IDPs are housed. You will find that there is a bigger difference with Moi stadium where redcross dont want to even put basic facilities forcing the local community in Kisumu to house the IDPs at St Stephens.
kenyans, these theories of Bitange and Wainaina only works for the few they serve. Bitange was key in selling 51percent shares of Telkom Kenya to the french consortium at 26 Billion Ksh. Before that the government cleared a debt of 69 billion. if 51% shares were sold at 26 it menas that Telkom Kenya was just worht 52 Billion. Why settle a debt of 69 billion? What is the mathematics here? telkom Kenya was worthless? Shame on you Bitange. Only people who dont know your inner dealings will respect what you say. You really like to please masters and never acts proffesionaly.
Alai
On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Wainaina Mungai <wainaina@madeinkenya.org> wrote:
I believe Waruru has raised an important question especially as relates to .....should Media houses be partisan? or must Media houses remain neutral independent of the preference of their owners?
My take is that Media is too critical as a part of society that it must not be partisan. We call the Press the "Fourth Estate" and we should make the press non-partisan just as we require the judiciary or other statutory bodies to be non-partisan even though the individuals running those institutions may be free to support different political leanings.
Dear Alai, let's all admit we have erred no matter what party or ideology we support. The political bias of the media is the problem we turn our focus to as it has brought us to the crisis we find ourselves in. My example of KTN/Standard also pointed out that other media houses (the same that you mentioned), have to deal with the fact that they are perceived as partisan in favour of the establishment. I also chose to deflect the debate to "way forward". Please let us not trivialise it as a matter of tribal chauvinism coz we will lose sight of the issues at hand. Let's work together for a win-win solution.
I would like to venture into analysing the role of SMS and the Internet but that would divert my atention from the unsolved problem of a Media that can destroy Kenya if left untempered.
On 2/13/08, Robert Alai <alai.robert@gmail.com> wrote:
Kenyans and Friends of Kenya
The Media shuldnt have media council. The media must go the way of the SA broadcast complaints commision which must be independent of the media and the gvernment. And guys and especially Wainaina. Please dont bring the PNU vs ODM politics in this forum. We are going to that direction and it wont help us. Lets all know that KTN has a duty to inform people just the way Royal Media and KBC and the Kameme 24 has been sending Kikuyu enthnic chauvinism in our ears. We have situations in this country where even Redcross and IOM have been called and informed by the government not to transport some IDPs. Please know that Kenya cant be in an imagined peace state. And peace exist only where justice is. Even if Raila and Kibaki agrees know that thre will be no peace without the people's right protected.
Alai
On Feb 13, 2008 2:49 PM, Kanja Waruru <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> wrote:
hi all, i like mungai's line of thought and i would like to contribute an additional point.
for media houses to be transparent during elections the media council should insist that each media house state their position's publicly and declare the parties/presidential candidates that they support/endorse or if they intend to remain neutral and independent.
this way the public will be making informed decision when they tune/buy into a particular media. Kanja
--- Wainaina Mungai <wainaina@madeinkenya.org> wrote:
Allow me to re-deflect the issue away from a specific media house and state the following as a way forward:
=== message truncated ===> _______________________________________________
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Dear all, The personal mail Alai has opted to copy to the list was not meant to be copied to then list. Apologies for that. Clearly, we must have moderation in relation to these discussions else there will be no need to have a mailing list on which we seek openly but respectfully. Am sure the moderator has powers to remedy the problem. Wainaina On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 10:51 PM, Robert Alai <alai.robert@gmail.com> wrote:
Wainaina
This is funny. On one hand you are describing how KTN/Standard did incite the public and ignore the fact that All Royal Media outlets including RamogiFM, Kameme, and KBC have gone to become Kikuyu chauvinist and not ready to protect the interest of Kenya. On another hand you claim ho the current Kenyan problem is political. *THE PROBLEM IS NOT POLITICAL BUT ETHNIC. *I have just come from a tour which took me from Tigoni, Juja, Nyeri, Naivasha, Eldoret, Kisumu, Yala and Busia. I travelled with the IDPs and listened and cried of what I heard. Kenyans are being denied their rights because they are not Kikuyu. I have the word of MPs and confirmed with IOM that the government explicitly informed the Redcross and IOM not to serve some communities. I have horror tales of women whose husbands were hacked with pangas inside Tigoni police station and the police couldnt save because they are not Kikuyu. I have talked to Abbas of IOM of how different Redcross is treating IDPs. kikuyu IDPs are treated with all care and others ignored. I personally snatched blankets from Pamela who is the regional redcross manager in Kisumu when she refused to give them to mothers and chidren I transported from tigoni and naivasha. I brought 17 buses and called redcross and informed them of my mission. I had a meeting with Dr Simiyu and Abbas Guled and they agreed to prepare the ground. After a whole day travel I got redcross not ready and when they saw the buses is when they started cutting the mbogas and meat. We handed over 4 children whose mother was admitted to Agha khan with serious illness and redcross took the children to a police station in Siaya.
Kenyan problem is tribal and not political. We cannot have one tribe running roughshod and even the religious leaders from Kikuyu preaching the Kikuyu superiority. We cannot have one tribe killing and maiming Kenyans while claiming there is a genocide against Kikuyus. No Kikuyu was killed in Kisumu. Infact they were protected and even I have Mwangi, and Kuria who are my friends living and working in Kisumu even now when they cant work anywhere else. But Kibaki is ordering NGOs not to serve non Kikuyus. Kikuyus enjoy greater access to loans and even humanitarian assistance. Go to Kondele in Kisumu where the Kikuyu IDPs are housed. You will find that there is a bigger difference with Moi stadium where redcross dont want to even put basic facilities forcing the local community in Kisumu to house the IDPs at St Stephens.
kenyans, these theories of Bitange and Wainaina only works for the few they serve. Bitange was key in selling 51percent shares of Telkom Kenya to the french consortium at 26 Billion Ksh. Before that the government cleared a debt of 69 billion. if 51% shares were sold at 26 it menas that Telkom Kenya was just worht 52 Billion. Why settle a debt of 69 billion? What is the mathematics here? telkom Kenya was worthless? Shame on you Bitange. Only people who dont know your inner dealings will respect what you say. You really like to please masters and never acts proffesionaly.
Alai
On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Wainaina Mungai <wainaina@madeinkenya.org> wrote:
I believe Waruru has raised an important question especially as relates to .....should Media houses be partisan? or must Media houses remain neutral independent of the preference of their owners?
My take is that Media is too critical as a part of society that it must not be partisan. We call the Press the "Fourth Estate" and we should make the press non-partisan just as we require the judiciary or other statutory bodies to be non-partisan even though the individuals running those institutions may be free to support different political leanings.
Dear Alai, let's all admit we have erred no matter what party or ideology we support. The political bias of the media is the problem we turn our focus to as it has brought us to the crisis we find ourselves in. My example of KTN/Standard also pointed out that other media houses (the same that you mentioned), have to deal with the fact that they are perceived as partisan in favour of the establishment. I also chose to deflect the debate to "way forward". Please let us not trivialise it as a matter of tribal chauvinism coz we will lose sight of the issues at hand. Let's work together for a win-win solution.
I would like to venture into analysing the role of SMS and the Internet but that would divert my atention from the unsolved problem of a Media that can destroy Kenya if left untempered.
On 2/13/08, Robert Alai <alai.robert@gmail.com> wrote:
Kenyans and Friends of Kenya
The Media shuldnt have media council. The media must go the way of the SA broadcast complaints commision which must be independent of the media and the gvernment. And guys and especially Wainaina. Please dont bring the PNU vs ODM politics in this forum. We are going to that direction and it wont help us. Lets all know that KTN has a duty to inform people just the way Royal Media and KBC and the Kameme 24 has been sending Kikuyu enthnic chauvinism in our ears. We have situations in this country where even Redcross and IOM have been called and informed by the government not to transport some IDPs. Please know that Kenya cant be in an imagined peace state. And peace exist only where justice is. Even if Raila and Kibaki agrees know that thre will be no peace without the people's right protected.
Alai
On Feb 13, 2008 2:49 PM, Kanja Waruru <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> wrote:
hi all, i like mungai's line of thought and i would like to contribute an additional point.
for media houses to be transparent during elections the media council should insist that each media house state their position's publicly and declare the parties/presidential candidates that they support/endorse or if they intend to remain neutral and independent.
this way the public will be making informed decision when they tune/buy into a particular media. Kanja
--- Wainaina Mungai <wainaina@madeinkenya.org> wrote:
Allow me to re-deflect the issue away from a specific media house and state the following as a way forward:
1. Journalists must work with all Kenyans to make the press free from undue influence from Media Owners. Press Freedom will not be achieved until we liberate the journalists from the editorial biases of the media owners.
2. Editors must be held responsible when media houses publish/broadcast in an unethical manner. For this to hold, we must ensure that the media owners are not the 'final' editors.
3. Journalists/reporters have developed a culture of accepting inducements in order to edit stories as requested. This must be treated as a crime due to the privileges society accords the press.
4. Media houses must employ and retrain qualified and ethical staff. There must be standards that ensure professionalism. Engineers, Doctors and others submit to standards that the media continues to dodge.
5. Kenya needs a Media Council "with teeth"...that will be a watchdog that acts in the interest of the public not as a affiliate lobby for Media Owners.
The verdict should be a clear message to all of us in the media circles. It's time to look inwards and liberate the profession of journalism from the businessmen who own the media houses.
Wainaina
On 2/13/08, Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Farida,
We should not consider the presence of lessos in
or Kamukunji as evidence that your story was true. The pre-marking or ballots and the lesso story are what would be considered mutually exclusive events. The use of lessos as indicator of accuracy is at the very least speculative. The fact that [it is possible] for an election to be stolen does not mean that and election [will be] stolen.
For KTN/Standard, the more direct issues as you vouch for the integrity of your story would be:
1. Did you have [evidence] that the ballot boxes were stuffed with pre-marked ballot papers? or were you speculating because someone came forward as a "witness"?
2. Do you believe that the killings of the Administration Police in Nyanza were a direct result of the story you authorised? If so, what have you done to at least console the families of the bereaved
ballot boxes in Kajiado policemen?
3. Did you have evidence that the Citi Hoppa buses
to various parts of the country were meant to be used for a rigging mission? and would you consider that your story was responsible for the burning of Citi Hoppa buses?
Most voters know that ballot boxes are checked before the start of voting and sealed infront of witnesses (agents, ECK officials etc). It is therefore unlikely that rigging would only take
elaborate conspiracy involving [all] officials/agents at a polling station.
Overall, the "vibes" KTN/Standard fraternity must contend with is not that they are a model of "free press" but that it is biased against the government or pro-ODM. The vibes stations such as Royal Media, Kameme and KBC contend with is that they have given Kenyans reason to be seen as pro-government/PNU. Those are the issues the press must address honestly and not hide behind tags and clichés such as 'press freedom' and 'muzzling the press'.
NOTE: I work for a competing media house but that is not my motivation for the issues i have raised on KTN/Standard. I respect journalists for the effort that goes into writing even the simplest story. However, I am aware that media houses and journalists have continued to allow their political and other biases to influence the way they report stories.
Wainaina
On Feb 14, 2008 12:09 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote:
> Wainaina > I personally authorised the story you are blaming KTN for and can vouch > for the integrity of that report any time. If indeed you believe it is not > possible to steal an election, how come that ballot boxes were found with > lessos, and election materials in some polling stations? > > We cannot resolve explosive issues by hiding or supressing the truth, > and no one is trying to exonerate the press. Let us not pretend that we do > not know why we are where we are, it is definately not because of KTN or the > Standard Group. > > And it is certainly not an academic excercise, afterall most of us do > not have another place to call home except Kenya. Believe me, any Country > which calls itself democratic must be able to
> matter how much of a nuisance it is. > > By all means industry players need mechanisms to
> behaviour in the media but aggression against media houses in light of the > current political crisis is in my opinion misplaced. > > regards > Farida > > > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> > *To:* fkaroney@ktnkenya.com > *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> > *Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:53 PM > *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent > > Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth > time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the > chase on how the media fueled the conflict. > > The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how > effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what > the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and > aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days > before the election day. Editors must have known
> possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. > That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative > Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify
that were carrying APs place is unless there is an live with a free press, no promote responsible that it is no longer the deaths of the APs
> especially because the accuracy of that rigging story === message truncated ===>
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We must endeavour to observe Netiquette Guildelines: 2.1.1 For mail: (bullet 4) - If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you've received, do not change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first. You may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you give proper attribution. (bullet6) - A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these "flames") even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you shouldn't be surprised if you get flamed and it's prudent not to respond to flames. (bullet 19) - Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you have really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it via FLAME ON/OFF enclosures. For example: FLAME ON: This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth it takes to send it. It's illogical and poorly reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with me. FLAME OFF <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855> --- Sincerely, Alex --- Wainaina Mungai <wainaina.mungai@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all,
The personal mail Alai has opted to copy to the list was not meant to be copied to then list. Apologies for that.
Clearly, we must have moderation in relation to these discussions else there will be no need to have a mailing list on which we seek openly but respectfully.
Am sure the moderator has powers to remedy the problem.
Wainaina
On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 10:51 PM, Robert Alai <alai.robert@gmail.com> wrote:
Wainaina
This is funny. On one hand you are describing how KTN/Standard did incite the public and ignore the fact that All Royal Media outlets including RamogiFM, Kameme, and KBC have gone to become Kikuyu chauvinist and not ready to protect the interest of Kenya. On another hand you claim ho the current Kenyan problem is political. *THE PROBLEM IS NOT POLITICAL BUT ETHNIC. *I have just come from a tour which took me from Tigoni, Juja, Nyeri, Naivasha, Eldoret, Kisumu, Yala and Busia. I travelled with the IDPs and listened and cried of what I heard. Kenyans are being denied their rights because they are not Kikuyu. I have the word of MPs and confirmed with IOM that the government explicitly informed the Redcross and IOM not to serve some communities. I have horror tales of women whose husbands were hacked with pangas inside Tigoni police station and the police couldnt save because they are not Kikuyu. I have talked to Abbas of IOM of how different Redcross is treating IDPs. kikuyu IDPs are treated with all care and others ignored. I personally snatched blankets from Pamela who is the regional redcross manager in Kisumu when she refused to give them to mothers and chidren I transported from tigoni and naivasha. I brought 17 buses and called redcross and informed them of my mission. I had a meeting with Dr Simiyu and Abbas Guled and they agreed to prepare the ground. After a whole day travel I got redcross not ready and when they saw the buses is when they started cutting the mbogas and meat. We handed over 4 children whose mother was admitted to Agha khan with serious illness and redcross took the children to a police station in Siaya.
Kenyan problem is tribal and not political. We cannot have one tribe running roughshod and even the religious leaders from Kikuyu preaching the Kikuyu superiority. We cannot have one tribe killing and maiming Kenyans while claiming there is a genocide against Kikuyus. No Kikuyu was killed in Kisumu. Infact they were protected and even I have Mwangi, and Kuria who are my friends living and working in Kisumu even now when they cant work anywhere else. But Kibaki is ordering NGOs not to serve non Kikuyus. Kikuyus enjoy greater access to loans and even humanitarian assistance. Go to Kondele in Kisumu where the Kikuyu IDPs are housed. You will find that there is a bigger difference with Moi stadium where redcross dont want to even put basic facilities forcing the local community in Kisumu to house the IDPs at St Stephens.
kenyans, these theories of Bitange and Wainaina only works for the few they serve. Bitange was key in selling 51percent shares of Telkom Kenya to the french consortium at 26 Billion Ksh. Before that the government cleared a debt of 69 billion. if 51% shares were sold at 26 it menas that Telkom Kenya was just worht 52 Billion. Why settle a debt of 69 billion? What is the mathematics here? telkom Kenya was worthless? Shame on you Bitange. Only people who dont know your inner dealings will respect what you say. You really like to please masters and never acts proffesionaly.
Alai
On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Wainaina Mungai
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njoAt this point in time, with all the pain we as part of IDPs and journalists- and as a country have experenced, the blame game is not beneficial. We all know to what extend our media houses nad even mobile subscribers, contributed to the spread of bad feelings that has brot untold sufferingto our country. We must admit that some, if not all of the msgs we printed and broadcasted, sent and received, werent fully censored. Whether it was for financial, communal or personal satisfaction is no longer the issue. What matters now is: what can we spread thru our media to REBUILD A PEACEFUL KENYA? A NATION ONE IS PROUD TO LIVE IN? A COUNTRY WHERE SOME OF US ARE TRIBELESS, HAVING BEEN BORN AND MARRIED BY PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES? Let us aid the success of the mediation process by giving to kenyans and the world that which is true, just and respectable to all of humanity, irrespective of which part of Kenya, or world they come from! JFrances Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote: Wainaina I personally authorised the story you are blaming KTN for and can vouch for the integrity of that report any time. If indeed you believe it is not possible to steal an election, how come that ballot boxes were found with lessos, and election materials in some polling stations? We cannot resolve explosive issues by hiding or supressing the truth, and no one is trying to exonerate the press. Let us not pretend that we do not know why we are where we are, it is definately not because of KTN or the Standard Group. And it is certainly not an academic excercise, afterall most of us do not have another place to call home except Kenya. Believe me, any Country which calls itself democratic must be able to live with a free press, no matter how much of a nuisance it is. By all means industry players need mechanisms to promote responsible behaviour in the media but aggression against media houses in light of the current political crisis is in my opinion misplaced. regards Farida ----- Original Message ----- From: Wainaina Mungai To: fkaroney@ktnkenya.com Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:53 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent Like Dorcas, I am not surprised that the media has for the umpteenth time, failed to take responsibility for their role. Allow me to cut to the chase on how the media fueled the conflict. The issue of "self regulation" has come up as journalists remind us how effective they were during the election period. I would like to know what the Media Council would say about KTN/Standard Group having published and aired sensational stories of a very unlikely vote rigging two or so days before the election day. Editors must have known that it is no longer possible to stuff ballot boxes prior to the voting day and get away with it. That unsubstantiated story led to the death of five Administrative Policemen. How would KTN/Standard Group justify the deaths of the APs especially because the accuracy of that rigging story was in doubt from the very moment it landed on the desk of the KTN/Standard Editor. The "messenger" must have known that the story was, other than being inaccurate, likely to ignite an explosive political confrontation. There are many other examples. The fact that politicians, ECK or church leaders may be guilty does not exonerate the Press so the issue of "not working in isolation" or being a powerless "messenger" does not arise. Hundreds of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands more are now homeless and property worth millions has been destroyed. The wounds inflicted on my country will take decades to heal. This is no longer an academic debate about Press Freedom or self regulation. Wainaina On Feb 13, 2008 3:59 AM, Farida Karoney <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> wrote: Guys, Pardon me for joining the discussion rather late in the day. I do not think that blanket condemnation of the media is useful in moving the Country forward. I do agree with Kanja that we need to audit all the players in order to establish where the rain started beating us. More importantly, we need to ask ourselves as groups and as individuals what we can do so that our Country can never again find itself in such a bind. As a practising journalist and an editor, I can confirm that the mainstream media did alot in the way of self regulation. Many of the things that were available to us yet were never aired nor printed are indeed shocking. Let us not be quick to condemn the messenger. I think that by now, we all know that there are issues much deeper that the disputed presidential elections which the Country needs to address in a wholesome manner regards Farida ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kanja Waruru" <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> To: <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:48 AM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent 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 blamed 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 lives 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 can't 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 wasn't 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 media's 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 couldn't 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 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
There are those who believe the media is innocent and the violence currently rocking the country was bound to happen anyway -- that historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan communities had to boil over at some point in time.
"The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was meant to explode whether the media encouraged it or not," said a journalist at the workshop. "Many people voted last year for change and it was a protest vote against years of inequalities. When they realized this would not happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they exploded."
Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media consultant said one of the causes of Kenya's unrest is the immaturity of its democracy. "There hasn't been competitive democracy in our country. That is our problem," Odera told the participants at the workshop.
The government was also blamed for the chaos because it slapped a blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence broke out in the country.
"The ban did not extend to international media including the Internet which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. This led to skewed information and hence panic and more destruction and deaths," said one journalist from the electronic media.
The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from all media organizations -- went to court this week to challenge the ban on broadcasters.
Participants at the workshop also heard the first hand experiences of journalists who covered the post election violence. Practioners complained about threats to their lives and complained that they felt segregated from the rest of the country.
As the workshop was taking place participants were well aware that several political writers and analysts had received death threats for writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable towards the government.
(END/2008)
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Dear all, The warring parties, in this conflict including international media and their villainy has received a lot of both local and worldwide attention and does not need repetition. But the role of our local media has escaped scrutiny all because they monopolise local public discourse to the exclusion of dissent. Too many Kenyans have died, so much blood split, tears cried, women and girls raped, property and livelihoods lost. Our media can not deny that news reporting especially pre and during elections acquired new definitions providing room for a bit of fiction that did irreparable damage to our communal fabric but also arbitrarily over hyped and created the tribal issues. Granted, media would say they were just reporting facts, but facts have a complex character. They can be neutral, volatile and sometimes both unhelpful and helpful. It is a fact but restraint in reporting some issues would localise any damage the fact could do to communal harmony. An event could fizzle out as just a law and order problem and when temperatures come down might even permit community leaders to sit down and negotiate peace, I am not denying our conflict now the complexities of the issues surrounding the conflict, but when facts are likely to convulse communities, reporters need discretion in transmitting them. That is the essence of social responsibility theory that requires the media to share the blame for adverse effects of their reporting. You may argue that the media holds a mirror to society and if the reflection is an ugly one, it can do little about it. And yes censorship does give rise to rumors far more dangerous than honest, truthful reporting. But in our case I do not think that the benefit of truthful reporting covered all facts. Reporters/editors and everyone involved threw caution to the wind. Media reporters/editors have to remember that they are not just journalists or editors, they are members of the Kenyan society that in the end bears the cost of their reporting. But most importantly now is what role for the media in post conflict reconstruction? The media should create space for communication among communities, societal conversation, provides tools and strategies to manage and process the myths, images, collective memories, fears and needs that shape perceptions that drive our behavior. Collective storytelling into public acts of healing, conflict resolution. Publicly shame perpetrators of violence and shaming should be separated from blaming. Media must AVOID sensational stories that retraumatise us or reducing testimonies to mere lists of atrocities. Careful reporting and commentaries must facilitate our national healing. Please note that the above views are personal and not a reflection of any of the organisations I am affiliated to. best alice Farida Karoney wrote:
Guys,
Pardon me for joining the discussion rather late in the day. I do not think that blanket condemnation of the media is useful in moving the Country forward.
I do agree with Kanja that we need to audit all the players in order to establish where the rain started beating us. More importantly, we need to ask ourselves as groups and as individuals what we can do so that our Country can never again find itself in such a bind.
As a practising journalist and an editor, I can confirm that the mainstream media did alot in the way of self regulation. Many of the things that were available to us yet were never aired nor printed are indeed shocking.
Let us not be quick to condemn the messenger. I think that by now, we all know that there are issues much deeper that the disputed presidential elections which the Country needs to address in a wholesome manner
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kanja Waruru" <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> To: <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:48 AM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
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 blamed 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 lives 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 can't 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 wasn't 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 media's 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 couldn't 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 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
There are those who believe the media is innocent and the violence currently rocking the country was bound to happen anyway -- that historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan communities had to boil over at some point in time.
"The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was meant to explode whether the media encouraged it or not," said a journalist at the workshop. "Many people voted last year for change and it was a protest vote against years of inequalities. When they realized this would not happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they exploded."
Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media consultant said one of the causes of Kenya's unrest is the immaturity of its democracy. "There hasn't been competitive democracy in our country. That is our problem," Odera told the participants at the workshop.
The government was also blamed for the chaos because it slapped a blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence broke out in the country.
"The ban did not extend to international media including the Internet which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. This led to skewed information and hence panic and more destruction and deaths," said one journalist from the electronic media.
The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from all media organizations -- went to court this week to challenge the ban on broadcasters.
Participants at the workshop also heard the first hand experiences of journalists who covered the post election violence. Practioners complained about threats to their lives and complained that they felt segregated from the rest of the country.
As the workshop was taking place participants were well aware that several political writers and analysts had received death threats for writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable towards the government.
(END/2008)
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Guys,
Pardon me for joining the discussion rather late in the day. I do not
As we deliberate, I would like to draw our attention to a research study we commissioned and a book produced entitled "The Media and the Rwanda Genocide" edited by Allan Thompson with a Forward by H.E. Koffi Annan - it is worth reading. You can get the full online copy at http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-106013-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html But as we discuss this issue, we should not be blind to the fact that informal networks via sms may have been even more lethal than mainstream media....and the speed at which information was transmitted using this medium was much faster than any media house can rely. Will that be factored into the evaluation? regards -----Original Message----- From: kictanet-bounces+eadera=idrc.or.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+eadera=idrc.or.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of alice Sent: 13 February 2008 10:10 To: eadera@idrc.or.ke Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent Dear all, The warring parties, in this conflict including international media and their villainy has received a lot of both local and worldwide attention and does not need repetition. But the role of our local media has escaped scrutiny all because they monopolise local public discourse to the exclusion of dissent. Too many Kenyans have died, so much blood split, tears cried, women and girls raped, property and livelihoods lost. Our media can not deny that news reporting especially pre and during elections acquired new definitions providing room for a bit of fiction that did irreparable damage to our communal fabric but also arbitrarily over hyped and created the tribal issues. Granted, media would say they were just reporting facts, but facts have a complex character. They can be neutral, volatile and sometimes both unhelpful and helpful. It is a fact but restraint in reporting some issues would localise any damage the fact could do to communal harmony. An event could fizzle out as just a law and order problem and when temperatures come down might even permit community leaders to sit down and negotiate peace, I am not denying our conflict now the complexities of the issues surrounding the conflict, but when facts are likely to convulse communities, reporters need discretion in transmitting them. That is the essence of social responsibility theory that requires the media to share the blame for adverse effects of their reporting. You may argue that the media holds a mirror to society and if the reflection is an ugly one, it can do little about it. And yes censorship does give rise to rumors far more dangerous than honest, truthful reporting. But in our case I do not think that the benefit of truthful reporting covered all facts. Reporters/editors and everyone involved threw caution to the wind. Media reporters/editors have to remember that they are not just journalists or editors, they are members of the Kenyan society that in the end bears the cost of their reporting. But most importantly now is what role for the media in post conflict reconstruction? The media should create space for communication among communities, societal conversation, provides tools and strategies to manage and process the myths, images, collective memories, fears and needs that shape perceptions that drive our behavior. Collective storytelling into public acts of healing, conflict resolution. Publicly shame perpetrators of violence and shaming should be separated from blaming. Media must AVOID sensational stories that retraumatise us or reducing testimonies to mere lists of atrocities. Careful reporting and commentaries must facilitate our national healing. Please note that the above views are personal and not a reflection of any of the organisations I am affiliated to. best alice Farida Karoney wrote: think
that blanket condemnation of the media is useful in moving the Country forward.
I do agree with Kanja that we need to audit all the players in order to establish where the rain started beating us. More importantly, we need to
ask ourselves as groups and as individuals what we can do so that our Country can never again find itself in such a bind.
As a practising journalist and an editor, I can confirm that the mainstream media did alot in the way of self regulation. Many of the things that were
available to us yet were never aired nor printed are indeed shocking.
Let us not be quick to condemn the messenger. I think that by now, we all know that there are issues much deeper that the disputed presidential elections which the Country needs to address in a wholesome manner
regards Farida
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kanja Waruru" <kanjawaruru@yahoo.com> To: <fkaroney@ktnkenya.com> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:48 AM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya: The Media is Not Innocent
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 blamed 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 lives 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 can't 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 wasn't 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 media's 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 couldn't 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 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
There are those who believe the media is innocent and the violence currently rocking the country was bound to happen anyway -- that historical economic inequalities among the Kenyan communities had to boil over at some point in time.
"The public vented long bottled-up anger. It was meant to explode whether the media encouraged it or not," said a journalist at the workshop. "Many people voted last year for change and it was a protest vote against years of inequalities. When they realized this would not happen when Kibaki was declared winner, they exploded."
Mitch Odera the moderator of the workshop and media consultant said one of the causes of Kenya's unrest is the immaturity of its democracy. "There hasn't been competitive democracy in our country. That is our problem," Odera told the participants at the workshop.
The government was also blamed for the chaos because it slapped a blanket ban on live broadcasters soon after violence broke out in the country.
"The ban did not extend to international media including the Internet which many Kenyans accessed and spread the word. This led to skewed information and hence panic and more destruction and deaths," said one journalist from the electronic media.
The Editors Guild -- an organization of editors from all media organizations -- went to court this week to challenge the ban on broadcasters.
Participants at the workshop also heard the first hand experiences of journalists who covered the post election violence. Practioners complained about threats to their lives and complained that they felt segregated from the rest of the country.
As the workshop was taking place participants were well aware that several political writers and analysts had received death threats for writing stories that were viewed as unfavourable towards the government.
(END/2008)
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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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Colleague, Just like we have been trying to correct others, let the media be corrected where they are wrong. While we focus on where the media went wrong. This does not in any way say that others were not party to the problem. I look forward to seeing the said workshop report. On Feb 13, 2008 10:31 AM, Alex Gakuru <alex.gakuru@yahoo.com> wrote:
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 can't 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 wasn't 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 media's 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 couldn't 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
=== message truncated ===
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-- Muthoni My Blog: http://rugongo.blogspot.com/ -------------------------------------------- Mahatma Gandhi once said:- First they ignore you, Then they laugh at you, Then they fight you, AND THEN YOU WIN!!!
Allow me to re-deflect the issue away from a specific media house I singled-out and state the following as a way forward: 1. Journalists must work with all Kenyans to make the press free from undue influence from Media Owners. Press Freedom will not be achieved until we liberate the journalists from the editorial biases of the media owners. 2. Editors must be held responsible when media houses publish/broadcast in an unethical manner. For this to hold true, we must ensure that the media owners are not the "final" editors. Owning a media house should not be a licence to abuse the privilege. 3. Journalists/reporters have developed a culture of accepting inducements in order to edit stories as requested. This must be treated as a crime due to the privileges society accords the press. We should also lobby for media owners to pay journalists well. 4. Media houses must employ and retrain qualified and ethical staff. There must be standards that ensure professionalism. Engineers, Doctors and others submit to standards that the media continues to dodge. Media owners must be required to report how they have invested in professional growth of their employees. 5. Kenya needs a Media Council "with teeth"...one that will be a watchdog that acts in the interest of the public...not as a affiliate lobby for Media Owners. The verdict should be a clear message to all of us in the media circles. It's time to look inward and implement radical reforms in the way Media in Kenya serves wananchi. Wainaina On Feb 13, 2008 2:23 PM, Dorcas Muthoni <dmuthoni@gmail.com> wrote:
Colleague,
Just like we have been trying to correct others, let the media be corrected where they are wrong.
While we focus on where the media went wrong. This does not in any way say that others were not party to the problem.
I look forward to seeing the said workshop report.
On Feb 13, 2008 10:31 AM, Alex Gakuru <alex.gakuru@yahoo.com> wrote:
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 can't 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 wasn't 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 media's 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 couldn't 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 [Kibaki's Kikuyu] is victimized by another [opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo]. Any other story on the contrary is downplayed or ignored," Ochami explained.
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participants (10)
-
Alex Gakuru -
alice -
Dorcas Muthoni -
Edith Adera -
Farida Karoney -
Frances Angalia -
Kanja Waruru -
Robert Alai -
Wainaina Mungai -
Wainaina Mungai