Kenya: Will media speak out for the innocent? [opinion]

The Nation has not always got it right. In its very first edition, the paper proclaimed: ‘‘Fit as a fiddle Sultan returns’’. They were referring to the Sultan of Zanzibar, who had undergone treatment in Europe. Unfortunately for the Nation, the 81-year-old monarch died six days after the paper hit the streets with its assessment of his health. That is one of the episodes narrated in Gerry Loughran’s history of the paper, Birth of a Nation.

Possibly the most important lesson in the book for today’s editors is the role the newspaper played in backing calls for uhuru. 

 

The Nation did not disguise its intentions. It did not pretend to be balanced on the big question of the day in the early 1960s. It took an open and unapologetic stance, stating that the British should hasten the arrival of independence and allow majority rule. 

 

The front page editorial of the first edition of the Daily Nation stated the paper’s intention “to do our utmost to help Kenya and the other East African territories make the perilous transition to African majority rule and full independence as peacefully and constructively as possible.”

 

Should adopt

 

That is a stance the people in charge of the media and civil society today should adopt in the course of the implementation of the new constitution. The constitution review process is too important an event for actors that are capable of shaping the course of history to remain neutral.

 

As Prof Edward Oyugi said last week, there are many players who will do their very best to sabotage the process of implementation. The media are uniquely positioned to fight back against these players.

 

The media must make it plain that implementing a new constitution is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

 

It should take an aggressive position against attempts by politicians to use the process of implementation as just another opportunity for horse trading between various political parties.

 

The media must be a constant thorn on the sides of the politicians that are treating this almost as another trivial contest to decide members of the parliamentary catering committee.

 

Politicians must appreciate that this is in fact a chance to give future generations institutions that are different from those that have sustained a culture of impunity, of corruption and patronage throughout our 47 years of independence.

 

The Kenyan media are uniquely powerful because of the relative weakness of other institutions that are supposed to deliver services to the people. There are not many societies where the media constantly come top in surveys on which institution citizens trust most.

 

In the UK, for example, the media regularly come very near the bottom with (would you believe it?) the police regularly feted as the one institution that enjoys the greatest levels of public trust.

 

As editors make judgement calls in the next few months, they must ask themselves how much their coverage of the referendum debate will contribute to what Loughran calls the nation’s “social health”.

 

The question that will be asked of them by historians is one Loughran posed in the first chapter of his book. “Did (the journalists) speak out for the innocent, defend the powerless, accuse the guilty, pillory the thieves? Did they ask the awkward question, investigate, press, persist, excavate and discomfort? … In the end, did the Nation stretch the bounds of freedom? Did it do the right thing? Did it make a difference?”

 

The generation in charge in the ‘60s certainly did.

 

The burden of expectation now rests on the editors in charge during these early days of the second coming of uhuru.

 

***

 

Here’s another snippet from the Birth of a Nation that spotlights surely the most difficult interview the journalists in the early Nation conducted, with Dr Hastings Banda, the eccentric Malawi nationalist:

 

Q: Dr Banda, you are having talks with Kenya and Tanganyika leaders. Can you tell us the basis of these discussions?

 

A: That’s my business.

 

Q: Dr Banda, how soon will it be before Nyasaland (later Malawi) leaves the Central African Federation?

 

A: Go and ask Mr Butler [R.A. Butler was Britain’s Colonial Secretary].

 

Q: Dr Banda, have you any new comment on the Federation?

 

A: I have made enough comment about the stupid Federation.

 

Q: Dr Banda, who will you go to for financial help after Nyasaland becomes independent?

 

Do you think I would go to you? I have never applied to you.

 

Q: Dr Banda, don’t you think you could be as polite in replying as we are in asking you questions?

 

Do you call that a polite question? If a reporter asks me about Federation I do not call him a polite journalist.

 

Why do you ask me these stupid questions? I did not ask to see you.

 

You asked to see me.

 

-August 14, 2010 by Murithi Mutiga

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Source:www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Will%20media%20speak%20out%20for%20the%20innocent/-/440808/976632/-/item/0/-/yyc0p6z/-/index.html  (accessed on 16.08.10)