Today was World Press Freedom Day, when men and women in love with their pens, notebooks, cameras and microphones reflect on their work and their surroundings and what they go through to feed society with information . Kenya has ranked first in Africa with a well-developed media, but its ranking on the World Press Freedom Index has not been impressive at all.
Maybe it’s high time we started asking ourselves some tough questions. Why are some countries in the region with the worst cases of violation of journalists’ rights ranked ahead of us? While we celebrate some positive developments, we cannot overlook some challenges that may be nipped in the bud to protect the gains we have made.
All industry officials should be concerned and do their utmost to safeguard the gains the Kenyan media has made so far.
Over the past two years, a trend has been growing where the government’s hand is seen in regulating the media in complete violation of the Constitution which guarantees media freedom. While government support for the media is welcome, it must stay out of the editorial space even during the transition to self-regulation.
There has been some excess on the part of some state agencies keen to tighten their grip on the media to serve certain interests that are not for the common good of society. This is dangerous for our growing democracy which requires the media not only to inform but also to play a critical watchdog role given that the country has had no opposition following the March 2018 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call for the Kenyan media. He revealed that the media is built on quicksand that can sink at any time if minimal force is applied. The layoffs and pay cuts suffered by journalists and media workers have demonstrated that the industry is not stable and needs to think about how to protect itself from such eventualities in the future.
It is against this backdrop that industry stakeholders came together last year and released a six-point agenda dubbed the Maanzoni Declaration to guide the industry as it seeks solutions to the challenges it faces.
The main highlights of the Maanzoni Declaration are media sustainability, media support, policy and legal reforms, women’s inclusion, and the safety and well-being of journalists. If all bondholders can address these issues, the industry will certainly fend off the challenges ahead. If we can create the time and resources to focus on these issues, the annual ritual of firing journalists will stop.
We head into the August 9 elections with the media determined to turn the tide in the face of the challenges that have plagued them in the past two elections, where performance has been rated below average by post-election analysis and reporting.
All stakeholders have a duty to build consumer confidence in media products by working together on projects that require huge resources to deliver information to readers, listeners and viewers instead of competing with each other. All news consumers want credible and verifiable information.
If the media does not do it right, the situation will be worse in the future due to technological changes that have made the dissemination of information more convenient.
