Allow us to ask for a friend: Why did we send press teams to the Tokyo Olympics?
Was it to report, film our teams in action, or to sit, watch, party and then send their opinions back home – heavily subjective opinions, for that matter, whenever our boys and girls, who do not go out there with the intention of losing, meet a better team or opponent?
Flash back to last week. Our boys, Shujaa, have just lost their first match to the Americans by a few points. KTN’s press team is reporting live from Japan.
What do we hear? A string of opinions about how badly our boys played; how they made “careless” mistakes that cost them the game; how their game was lackluster; how they messed up the game; how the boys lacked a “game plan” (whatever that is), etcetera.
In short, our boys ought to be ashamed of themselves for losing to the Americans.
This is not reporting. We lack a proper name for it for now, so let us settle for one word: unprofessional.
We would have let it pass if the journalist reporting it were also a professional rugby coach or a retired rugby player. We doubt he is.
We also call it badmouthing a team of hardworking men who, with blood and sweat, did their best to represent the country – for they did not go out there with the intention of losing.
If they lost the game, then the reporter lost twice: The game and professionalism.
We see this quite often. Fellows who purport to know more about all games than the players and coaches (even when they have never touched a rugby, soccer, volleyball, hockey ball) using media outlets to shame gallant men and women who boldly step out to represent the country.
One of the most sacred rules in our Code of Conduct is objectivity, which means, staying out of the stories that we are reporting and remaining coldly factual. Opinion, however sugar-coated, is not fact; it belongs to editorials and commentaries.
Besides, there’s also something about fairness and balance in a story. On this particular Shujaa story, we expected to hear from the Americans. What did they think about our boys’ performance? Was it an easy win? Did they feel they were facing a worthy opponent?
This would have been easy, given that the American coach trained our boys at some point in the past.
But no. As soon as some of the guys we send out there to cover our teams in international sports land at the airport, they cease being journalists and, in some cases, being Kenyan.
We even beamed one of our boys sobbing after losing! Now, the last time we checked there was a code on how to cover personal, emotional moments, like, handling people that are hurting with empathy.
Granted, the man wept. A perfect headline that one. Okoth Wept. But the story ought to have gone further than pictures of a broken man sobbing, into exploring his claims that he had been robbed.
We expected to hear from the judges, or some boxing official; we expected a replay of the match that this man said he won and a professional opinion on who truly won and who truly lost.
What did we have instead? Okoth wept.
