Below are headings of some stories on NTV Tonight with Smriti Vidyarthi on October 1:
“A-maize-ing to be back”. It was the story of Sirisia MP John Waluke’s return to Parliament after he was released on bail from jail where he had spent three months. He was convicted of corruption involving the National Cereals and Produce Board and sentenced to 67 years together with his business partner Grace Wakhungu (69 years).
“60 million”? Wat-er tragedy!” Sh60 million worth of repair works at the Lake Nakuru National Park is believed to have been lost.
“Tree-mendous idea”. Iconic fig tree along Waiyaki Way will be saved during construction of the Nairobi Expressway.
“You’re not a-loan”. Kenya has entered a funding agreement with France for the development of a commuter railway line from Nairobi CBD to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
Were these headings written by NTV clown Dr King’ori of “The Wicked Edition”? No. The editorial pontiffs on Kimathi Street made the decision months ago to give their headings a humorous twist.
Humour is important. Laughter, after all, is the best medicine. News tends to be depressing. Coronavirus, death, famine, floods, violence and so on. Continuous exposure to such content can be emotionally draining. People were advised to consume less news during the Covid-19 pandemic for their own sanity.
But are the NTV headings humour or trivialising the news? What is there to laugh about the caption, “You’re not a-loan”? Or “Tree-mendous idea”? What is creative about this absurd play on words?
News is a specific type of media content. Audiences know it. Do people sit before their TV set watching prime time news with the hope they would find a joke to laugh about?
NTV has humour programmes like “Churchill Show”, “The Wicked Edition” and “Bull’s Eye”. Moreover, the large number of other entertainment content makes it unnecessary to force humour into the news.
In his column in the People Daily titled “Time we leave jokes out of news business” (September 25, p.10), communication scholar Prof Levi Obonyo of Daystar University rejected NTV’s invention.
“It started as a play on words. There is nothing wrong with that if the play on words makes sense and, where possible, is consistent with the rules of grammar in the language,” he wrote.
Part of the process of transmitting a story is to demonstrate the seriousness of the issue being covered, Obonyo said. “It is hard to maintain that seriousness when the process of doing so breaks the rules and borders on the trite, the funny and on comedy”.
The professor is not being a news purist. In this era of extensive use of social media, people know where to go for funny content. It is not clear what problem NTV is trying to solve with the invention.
“A television station has an entire run of programmes that provides the station with an opportunity to provide a range of content to its viewers, including the funny and comical ones,” Obonyo said.
“Let the news hour be a break for serious information and leave the jokes aside.”
We agree.
Totally in agreement. At the beginning this got people excited but as it persisted and NTV appearing to overdo it, I remembered there is always something very peculiar with how Kenyans react to nonsense. You notice people are easily excited about something new and mostly trivialities, jokes, etc. you noticed the overzealousness in handling the Covid-19 pandemic, the drama in burying the dead with the undertakers in full PPE kits- never saw something like that even in Italy where so many died than us here, but still they chose to dramatize it. I think it is in people’s DNA here. While at the BBC , such would only apply to extremely light stories, and it would be very occasional. I am always alarmed at how NTV has persisted and wants to normalize this nonsense. Those budding journalists from KIMC, SOJ or Daystar will think it is cool. And every story will have a trivialized headline in future. Tell me if our journalism will have not gone to the dogs 🤷🏿♂️🤷🏿♂️🤷🏿♂️
I guess ur mad because were now moving from citizen to NTV for news, that shit is cool… I don’t have time to watch churchill or memes in social media but this NTV headlines cover for it all. If ur not comfortable with it don’t judge, just watch news elsewhere.
I don’t think we are supposed to sit down and start accusing any media station on how they deliver their news, though I accept the fact that, some sort of seriousness is needed during news anchoring, but again in real sense most people do watch news sometimes with intentions of getting that hope, on some issues. For example take a case where the media is reporting cases on suicidal, or lets say deaths, then you report keeping the tension high, that can make some people end up getting stressed, so if NTV thinks using humour is the best way, then let them do their way.