Why? He has curved a niche for himself in one area where only Caesar’s wife qualifies: the moral cop.
But for the last couple of weeks, Ezekiel Mutua has been training his guns on the field that made him what he is today – journalism, the media.
He wrote on his Facebook wall, which by the way attracts a loads of comments from tail waggers to fellows who hope if they like his comments, he might just offer them a job: “When media houses play dirty music and make television studios discotheques why are we shocked that our kids think controversy, insults and profanity sells?” the moral cop fulminated.
He was, of course, referring to the regrettable incident at Consolata School, where a boy high on testosterone posted a video of himself hurling unprintable insults at some girl and her father.
Then Mutua, after some pretty unkind words for his chief critics, went on to declare: “No country with unprofessional media like Kenya makes any meaningful progress.”
Mediascape would have ignored this unprofessional business had Mutua not repeated it in a subsequent post.
Now, we do not vouch for the professionalism (or lack of it) of our journalists out there. But the Media Council was formed for exactly this reason – to raise issues surrounding the professionalism (or lack of it) of our journalists.
Ezekiel Mutua knows this only too well. He was once the Atwoli of the Kenya Union of Journalists.
To collectively dismiss the entire journalism fraternity in Kenya as a bunch of “nonprofessionals” hell bent on taking Kenya back to the Stone Age is therefore baffling.
To collectively accuse media houses of airing dirty content is, again, to be unfair to some of our deeply religious TVs that play Hosanna music the entire Sunday like this country has only one faith.
It is only fair that Ezekiel Mutua respects the one basic rule of journalism – facts are sacred. If you feel that our journalists are unprofessional, prove it with names, places, incidents – it’s called the who, where and what – and we have not added when, why and how.
If Ezekiel has any beef with Kenya’s mediascape, he knows where to go – Britam Centre, ground floor.
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Mediascape will not delve much into the sad tragedy at Precious Talent Academy.
And yes, Nation did a good job pushing for action against the school owner’s proprietor. But, wait, was the proprietor the only guilty party or were we looking for a fall guy?
On the first day of the incident, Education CS George Magoha said: “In my most humble opinion, the classes are stable but you notice somebody went and built another storey on top of a temporary structure.”
Did anyone ask the good surgeon what made him quickly give the school infrastructure a clean A before turning around and closing it?
Why was it that as we were pushing for the arrest of the school’s proprietor (“Arrest owner of tragedy school, say leaders,” Nation) the leaders turned out to be only two senators: one from Laikipia, the other from Meru? Area MP John Kiarie was seeking divine intervention to have the school opened. (“We are hoping and praying…..” he said.)
Standard went out of the way to show how what happened at the school was not an isolated case, mobilizing their bureaus to paint a picture of more disasters waiting to happen from as far as Kisumu, Kisii, Isolo, Nyeri and Nakuru
Nation went for the proprietor hammer and tongs….and lots of emotions. Here’s an example: “From his impersonal tone and lack of remorse when he addressed the media following the school tragedy………Mr Wainaina, the proprietor of Precious Talent Academy, demonstrated characteristic arrogance with which he seems to have operated the school for more than 10 years….”
Rather emotional for a news story. Maybe if it was in an editorial, we would have passed this one, but until they discover remorsemeters to measure remorse and arrogantimeters to measure arrogance, all journalists are best advised to leave their emotions at home.
Still, the gem of the Precious Talent Academy was the following line: “Ms Lucy Wairimu, a candidate in the school, narrowly escaped.” “The building started shaking. We all panicked and started running,” a distraught Ms Wairimu told the Nation.
Ms Wairimu is in Class 8. All the best Ms!
