The Death of Kenyan Journalism

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Submitted by MATHIU on Wed, 17/08/2011 - 11:27am

The latest entrants into the Kenyan news stand have great ambitions of making journalism come knocking again – like all others whose graves now dot the media landscape.

With the Nation Media Group’s NTV introducing a closer look into the counties, all the other media houses have copy pasted the work to feed the 40 plus million Kenyans a replica of the same.

Every product must undoubtedly stand out from the competition otherwise it beats the logic to serve people with more of the fare they already have. Going by the headlines of these programmes, the pledges are either overstated or exaggerated, as they contain nothing that justifies their taglines.

This dismal state of affairs and responsibility, we can now understand why our journalism is basically made up of four categories of news.

First, our minds have been made to believe that bad news is something we desire to hear about.

Therefore news of accidents and deaths tops news content, and are given extensive coverage, and repeated over and over again.

Secondly, for some reason, our media outlets present press releases and conferences to us as news items. A practice we have grown to accept as newsworthy, without realising that this journalism of press releases is just an actualization of the death of real journalistic practices.

Thirdly, the boundaries between family matters and public matters have been blared, so that family disputes manage to penetrate into newsrooms only to make screaming headlines.

From the Kirima saga to the late Wanjiru’s ‘balconization’, not to talk of Mutunga’s divorce and stud cases.

The rise of opinionated journalism in Kenya has given a final blow to good journalism practice in the country, and there is indeed urgent need to revive the true spirit of journalism.