This will not be the first time I will be saying that we need an overhaul in our media sector.Our media has blatantly failed to raise beyond myopic journalism.They commit acres of space and time by focusing on political shenanigans rather than developmental issues.Indeed our learned men and women of the fourth estate have knocked themselves off the pedestal and no longer know what constitute a newsworthy item.
Though the Kenya cases at The Hague are unprecedented in our national experience, the media on pure hype surrounding the first appearance of the so-called "Ocampo Six" before the International Criminal Court (ICC) are baffling, to say the least.
I have always opposed and condemned journalism that is three parts; minute,intended for no good(Malicious) and sensational. There could never be a worse manifestation of this type of journalism than the way our mass media have reported The Hague melodrama.Days before the Six set off for The Hague, the Daily Nation ran a front-page story that included a night club and restaurant guide to the city the Dutch call Den Haag, all complete with a Red Light (legalised prostitution) district guide!
Did this media mean to suggest that our top leaders are as depraved and frivolous as to be actually decadent? How did the consideration of expensive restaurants, night-clubbing and paid-for sex at all arise in the context of the preliminaries of an international crimes-against-humanity trial?That same week, Alex Chamwada of Citizen TV went around the streets of Den Haag, interviewing the poor inhabitants of the city on the subject of the Kenya Six. Many of his interlocutors appeared to be unaware even of the existence or purpose of the ICC in their own city, much less of the Kenyan accused! What is this gramophone treatment of the Kenya cases in aid of? Why amplify the matter before Dutch ignoramuses who don't care a whit what Kenyans have done or not done?
I single out the Nation Media Group and Citizen TV because they used to set very high standards indeed for extremely sensitive court proceedings. It was the selfsame Daily Nation which, way back in 1969-70, gave newspaper readers their first truly professional journalism covering a major court case.
As for Citizen TV, they were the channel back in 2003-04 which brought us the Goldenberg hearings under the judicial commission of inquiry chaired by Justice Samuel Bosire in full and unexpurgated on a daily basis after prime-time. Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans stayed up till late watching the proceedings. Today, Citizen, a channel that had barely any advertising in 2003-4, is the king of TV ads in the electronic media segment.
In both 1969-70 and 2003-4, the coverage of truly sensational cases was done in such a professional and creative manner that, negative as the deeds then being prosecuted were, there were no overtly negative impacts on any other aspects of Kenya's national life - not the economy, even though Goldenberg concerns terrible crimes against the economy; not tourism; and not Kenya's image or standing in the comity of nations.
The Hague cases are potentially the most politically polarizing and divisive litigation concerning Kenyans and Kenya in our generation. How they are reported and analyzed in the media will impact on our image, not only locally, but also internationally.
On the day William Ruto arrived in The Hague accompanied by some 24 MPs, the lead item on the BBC World Service, Google News, Reuters and Al Jazeera was the Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo and how he was holed up in the cellar of the Presidential Palace in Abidjan as troops loyal to Alassane Ouattara stormed the place. The Kenyan arrivals were relegated to the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.
But the Kenyan media have an amazing obsession with the negative and the bizarre: They are hell-bent on creating a country of cynics and pessimists. Indeed, occasionally, Kenyans are even described as being among the world's most optimistic people. But our media behave as if we are a nation of cry babies and professional doomsayers, serving us a news diet predicated on doom and disaster.
Where is the saturation coverage and killer hype when Kenyans run rings around others and win marathons the world over? Where were they when Prof Wangari Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and Time, the global US newsmagazine, got through to her first with their feature "10 Questions for Wangari Maathai"? Neither NTV nor Citizen has ever sent a crew abroad to tell the wazungu about the Seventh Wonder of the modern world, the Great Migration of wildebeest in the Maasai Mara.
One of the great untold stories about the Mau Mau case going on in London.The case is so serious and gross that other international media are paying keen attention to it while our media preoccupy themselves with non material.Our media should be cocentrationg in wanting to know the details of the files ordered released by the high court in london
But does our media people ever listen....?
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