On Monday, July 29, the BBC World Service Radio aired a report about US President Donald Trump claiming he took part in rescue operations during the September 11, 2001 terror attack. The BBC said there was no evidence to support Trump’s claim.
It happens often. Politicians and other newsmakers pull numbers out of thin air or make grand claims without any proof. They have their agendas. They want to scare or mesmerise, claim power.
What’s troubling is that such information is usually treated as Gospel truth by journalists. News organisations reproduce the figures or claims without any attempt to verify. Some of the claims are obviously false but they are published anyway.
That is bad journalism. If someone makes a claim a reporter finds mind-boggling, the professional thing to do is verify and state the correct position against the newsmaker’s claim.
The Star on August 1 published a small story about a 14-year-old girl in Tigania, Meru, who was rescued from early marriage to a 21-year-old man. He paid her grandfather Sh10,000 worth of miraa as bride wealth. The girl’s mother is serving a life sentence in Nakuru for murder.
“The girl said she has been living with the man for one month, adding she gave consent to be married off. The age of consent is 18 years,” the paper reported.
The clarification that the age of consent is 18 is important and commendable. It would have been misleading to merely report that the girl said she consented to the marriage.
But the same paper on July 21 reported that Health CS Sicily Kariuki advised Kenyans to shun eating red meat altogether.
Livestock is a key component of the country’s food security. Pastoralists in Kenya and around the world live almost entirely on meat and other livestock products. There is no law or policy in Kenya requiring citizens to shun eating meat altogether.
“Kariuki has instead said it is high time Kenyans went back to eating traditional foods to help fight the high burden of non-communicable diseases in the country”, the Star reported.
This is false. Meat is traditional food in Kenya and everywhere in the world.
“From a health point, we are being encouraged to move away from this kind of diet; that every day for Kenyans is nyama choma or red meat that you have boiled. We are being encouraged to move towards a more vegetable-based diet as it were for a long time,” Kariuki said, according to the paper.
Is it true that Kenyans eat nyama choma or any other red meat everyday? When a journalist writes such things without clarification, does he/she understand the society she/he lives in?
Journalists must do more than merely report what is said.
Cartoonist, writer and public affairs analyst Patrick Gathara raised this point in several tweets last week. He was reacting to a story carried by the Standard that quoted Interior CS Fred Matiang’i saying government measures had led to a sharp drop in road accidents.
“So far, our short-term interventions have yielded a 50 per cent reduction in road fatalities, which means we are on the right course,” the CS said.
Gathara disagreed. “There hasn’t been a 50 per cent reduction in road fatalities. GoK doesn’t really know how many Kenyans die on our roads but by its own woefully understated estimates, that number has not been cut, let alone cut in half,” he protested.
Even from the sound of it alone, the claim of a 50 per cent reduction in road deaths is suspicious. Significantly, the good CS did not say where he pulled the figures from.
“It is not enough for journalists to simply regurgitate the ‘revelations’ of public officials and politicians. They must question what they’re told. How, for example, does GoK know this? Have there been any studies establishing it or are we doing policy via gut feeling?” Gathara said.
A good reporter must fact-check the claims made by newsmakers or one becomes a mere purveyor of fake news. If a claim is not factual, establish the facts and say so.
