Media Madness: Moving Past Breaking News
During his public lecture at the University of Nairobi, last week, Professor Ngugi wa Thing’o brought up the question of the kiondo being patented in Japan. He questioned why he did not hear any media outcry on the matter. The Kiondo story is a bit old as is the Kikoy saga that saw a firm in the UK attempt to patent the Kikoy from 2006 to sometime in Early 2008 when the patent application was stopped.
That might seem like forever ago, and you would expect follow-up stories on the issue of (African) intellectual property to pop up in the media. We would in particular like to hear of a Kenyan that attempted to sell Kiondos in Japan, but that is a story that might never surface.
In journalism school they teach news values. Timeliness is hugely emphasized in this lesson, which explains why news broadcasts are full of breaking/recent news. The concept does make sense for everyone wants to be in the know. However, journalism schools also teach that the media is the people’s watchdog. A watchdog is like a CCTV camera, it is expected to offer surveilance round the clock. If the Kenyan media is the people’s watchdog then why is it’s surveilance limited to such a little timespan? Why have follow-up stories become a myth? Why is in-depth reporting a scarce commodity?
The amount of investigative journalism that compromises of Kenya media does not even make up 5% of the daily media out put. Early 2014, thousands of Somalis were held at the Kasarani Stadium. Did they all make it back to their homes? Were there long term side effects of this detention? We shall never know for that story is old and the Kenyan media has moved on to whatever is breaking right now. The media shall talk about it for five minutes, maybe ten and move onto something else. The Kenyan media does not take up causes unless the issues directly affects them (Media Freedom Bills are their favourites).
This has us questioning what happened to Kenyan media, can it be saved? Can it go back to the days of Muigwithania and Weekly Review? Can Kenyan media influence political reforms like these two did, ushering independence and later multi party politics? It ought to.
