Step aside talking heads, we have News Gang

One of the staggering ironies of Kenyan journalism is over-reliance on authority. Reporters seek the opinion of one authority or the other even on subjects about which the scribes themselves can make competent and highly valuable observations.

The pundit has become a ubiquitous figure on the media scene as a result, edging out the journalist as the premier chronicler and analyst of public life – writer of the first draft of history. Nay, it is not that journalists have actually been edged out. They have ceded their space.

A reporter who has covered al Shabaab militants in Lamu would offer more useful insights than a PhD-wielding talking head from the University of Kabianga who has read many papers on the issue but has never set foot in the coastal county.

 An astute business writer would be the person to listen to about the dynamics of Kenyan markets instead of some egghead who would basically tell you what they read in the papers or saw on TV.

Between a political journalist who regularly reports on Kenya, has extensive contacts and reads widely and an armchair “political analyst” whose day job is lawyering or lecturing, who might be smarter in scrutinizing the sacking of Mwangi “Locust” Kiunjuri?

Ivory tower pundits have their place, no doubt. But, in fact, journalists with first hand daily experience of the news scene are the guys who fully understand what is going on.

That is the point of Citizen TV’s weekly current affairs programme News Gang. The show demonstrates conclusively that good journalists are not merely conveyor belts of other people’s thoughts. They are analysts of the issues they report on.

In last week’s edition on January 16, the gang tackled President Uhuru Kenyatta’s legacy. None of Kenya’s presidents since Independence ever appeared to be so worried about what future generations would think about him as Uhuru. At least not so openly and aggressively.

Francis Gachuiri fired the first shot: “I am looking at the Big Four Agenda and particularly the agriculture sector. Food security is one of the Big Four Agenda. And all the things that the President said, interesting as they were, has there been a commensurate increase in terms of budget in the Ministry of Agriculture to finance or fund the Big Four Agenda?”

Gachuiri explained that there has been no significant increase in the Ministry of Agriculture budget since 2013 when Uhuru came to power.

The gang was dissecting the President’s address to the nation from Mombasa, where he announced a Cabinet reshuffle in which Agriculture CS Kiunjuri was dropped. Linus Kaikai, Joe Ageyo, Jamila Mohamed, Gachuri and Yvonne Okwara took note of Uhuru’s eyebrow raising expression, “one government approach”. Kwani how have things been done hitherto?

To the gang, the expression appeared to underline the role of “super CS” Fred Matiang’i in Uhuru’s government and the yawning rift between the President and his Deputy William Ruto, who was conspicuously missing from the Mombasa event.

Okwara noted that in the past, Uhuru would have made the announcements in Mombasa with Ruto. “The Deputy President standing behind him, their sleeves rolled up, matching ties…things are not the same,” she said.

“From a political standpoint you have to remember that in the first term the President needed the deputy more than the deputy needed him. In fact he knew that without the Deputy President it would have been difficult for him to get a second term,” Ageyo explained. In the second term, he said, Uhuru through the handshake has new allies and more fierce defenders like ODM’s Junet Mohammed. Ruto is dispensable.

Incisive. So, who needs “political analysts”? News Gang challenges journalists to reclaim their space and help their audiences make sense of the world around them. Kudos!