Last year, a man who was photographed eating his githeri packed in a polythene bag while queuing to vote became a national sensation. He was even awarded the Head of State Commendation. Wags promptly coined the term “githeri media” to describe the state of journalism in Kenya.
If Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria talked about foreskins, the media would guarantee him a national audience.
Kiambu County Woman Rep Gathoni wa Muchomba was in the news all week. Reason? She spoke in favour of polygamy.
On Tuesday last week Citizen TV’s morning show, The Big Breakfast, focused on the question: Do men understand consent? The host said the discussion was based on a woman’s posts on social media claiming she had been raped by two men at a party. She was too traumatized to seek any help, she claimed. After she established that she had conceived following the ordeal, she called one of the men asking him to take responsibility for the unborn baby. The man refused. So she took to social media to expose him.
The Big Breakfast panel discussion was more than half an hour of pointless sophistry.
Look, rape cannot sensibly be the basis of a discussion on national TV about whether men understand consent or not. Of course men understand consent. A few don’t.
TV people ought to know that rape is a crime. Period. It is violence. If this atrocious crime is simply framed as a question about consent, we might as well have a TV discussion about whether robbers understand the right to property!
Do the media honchos know that many people are sick and tired of ludicrous content? We are at a point where not watching TV or not reading the newspapers is almost becoming a movement in Kenya. People actually brag about it.
Many people can relate with the Facebook conversation below:
Nyang’wara Ben-Moses: Tangu the Harambee House handshake and Miguna Miguna’s theatrics, I have learned to give Kenyan newspapers a wide berth. That means kuhepa The Standard and Daily Nation.
Maneno T Mwikwabe: Ben-mo, mimi niko Kenya but the only newspapers I read are the ones someone else is reading and I can read the headlines at the bank, on the bus or at the bar… I also don’t watch TV news – my time before the blue screen is spent interacting with Hollywood. And I think my mental and physical health has all improved!
The news is full of the inanities and intrigues of politicians. Or reports about government plans, which are almost always never followed up to inform citizens about the extent of implementation and the impacts. A thorough investigative report is now rare.
Business news tells you about corporate events, mostly.
Coverage of rural areas routinely consists of shallow reports about afflictions of one kind or other and hapless citizens appealing to the government for help. Someone committed suicide. Two women fought over a man. Reports of witches, domestic or communal violence or people having sex with cows. Hey!
And then you have this bevy of media celebrities whose only claim to fame is their ability to parody ethnic accents and stereotypes about various Kenyan communities. Or mimicking a politician. That is called entertainment. Aagh!
Why would anyone want to consume this kind of content – with the real risk of mental and spiritual constipation? Once you have been informed about all these things – politicians’ theatrics, violence or witchcraft in the villages, people having sex with goats, etcetera – what are you supposed to do? Would you be excited that you are better informed?
Is the media really providing information for transformation?
Yet, all indications are that we are living in sad times. Power has lost its morality. That means power no longer serves the people. Those who wield it do so with the arrogance of uta-do? attitude. And those who have little of it look on helplessly or find other distractions. Or they try to engage in struggles for justice, which are usually futile.
What is the task of the Kenyan media in these times? Ladling out bland content?
In a thoughtful piece about the Kenyan media last week, Muthoni Wanyeki, Africa Director of Open society Foundations, bemoaned the fact that media houses are under intense political pressure to silence dissent and that some of them have made ‘small’ sacrifices (which have gone on to become big sacrifices) in order to survive. This is betrayal of their audiences, Wanyeki charged.
She advised media to play, “to the best of their ability, their role as more than recorders of events, as more than analysts of events, but also their role as defenders of the very rights on which their existence is predicated.”
That means taking a conscious stand to be on the side of the people – and not on the side of power that has lost its morality. Or feeding audiences with pointless fare.
