At last, coronavirus docked on our mediascape shores.
But first, a quick story. Remember the boy who cried wolf?
Let’s jog your memory: Little fellow is bored in the grazing field, and knowing that shouting ‘wolf’ would have everyone out running to the fields, did exactly that. Took a deep breath that filled his little naughty lungs to the brim and howled: ‘Help! Wolf! Someone help!’
Everyone came running, carrying all manner of weapons: machetes, slashers, axes, chainsaws, and even kitchen folks! In our uniquely Kenyan mediascape we call them “crude weapons.”
They found the boy rolling on the pastures in laughter. Twice this happened, and twice all “crude weapons” came out. The third time a real wolf decided to put an end to the boy’s tomfoolery, and appeared ‘in person.’
The boy cried wolf again, the villagers yawned and said: Don’t bother, he is pulling our leg again.
Now back to coronavirus’ homecoming in our newsrooms. It is sad, but hey, it will keep away those boring Ruto-this, Raila-that headlines for some time.
The tragedy of our journalism is that bad news is goog news. Which is precisely why our newsrooms were eagerly waiting for a Kenyan coronavirus story.
Why we dispatched news crews on every coronavirus sighting long since it landed on our shores – never mind that no newsroom has prepared its gallant men and women who run toward danger when everyone else is running away.
And so we dispatched teams to Mombasa when some twerp reported that a German had been quarantined in a hotel with coronavirus. It turned out to be fake news, for which we got some tongue thrashing from a county executive for health.
“Why would you report such (nonsense)?” she thundered at some poor journalist who called to enquire about the report.
The poor journalist tucked the tail between a pen and a microphone and bolted.
Then the thinly veiled threats began: It is criminal to spread malicious and alarmist statements about coronavirus. Such will be forwarded to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations for action, said soldier turned State Spokesperson Cyrus Oguna.
And right there, coronavirus became a weapon against media freedom long before it landed on our shores. As late as last weekend, the same thinly veiled threat was issued.
Very well. Here at the mediascape we do not support idlers who create all sorts of rumours about what is rapidly unfolding into a global health disaster and spread these online.
But the best way to counter a rumour is with the truth, not with a gun.
Guns might work very well with criminals, but with rumours, they have a tendency to misfire; to fan the rumours instead of putting them out; to give a rumour a life of its own.
If you doubt us, just try asking what happened when similar threats were used against fellows spreading rumours on the existence of aliens – those green fellows from outer space that Hollywood created.
It was fake news on the silver screen. Problem is, some people believed it.
And when some ‘government authorities’ threatened to ‘take legal action’ against anyone spreading alien rumours, the rumours gained new traction: “The government does not want you to know that there are little green men…..the government has some little green men locked up in its underground top security and research facility in the desert….”
Look, the truth is, one, that there are many folks out there who would rather trust an idle blogger than their government – and all for a very good reason, that they have been lied to before by the very people they trusted not to hoard public information.
Two, it makes little sense, wait, no sense at all, to tell Kenyans to be vigilant and report anything suspiciously coronavirus out there while at the same time telling them that they risk having a bunch of detectives knocking at their door for doing exactly what you are appealing to them to do: be vigilant, and report anything suspiciously coronavirus.
Three, anyone who knows our country’s mediascape will tell you this for free: That it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a journalist to get someone in government to give quick and useful verification of any rumour.
And four, let us face it, in a country where the public’s right to information only exists on paper, we survive on rumours. As such, you ignore a rumour at your own peril. For, indeed, much of what we have on our mediascape today started as rumours.
So, now that coronavirus is here, all players must sober up or we will be dealing with more than coronavirus. We will be dealing with the case of the boy who cried wolf.
