On August 19, K24 TV published a story titled, “Men who impregnate girls will be castrated”. The inaudible video clip circulated through the station’s Facebook and Twitter accounts carried overlaid text that said, “Narok County Governor Samuel ole Tunai has called on the Narok County Assembly to pass stiff penalties on men who impregnate underage girls”.
Journalists at a national TV station ought to know that, a) castration of men who impregnate underage girls might be imposed by the Taliban who grabbed power in Afghanistan on August 15, but such a penalty does not exist in the laws of Kenya; b) a county assembly has no powers to enact criminal laws of any kind; and c) all sexual offences are covered by the Sexual Offences Act 2006.
So, nini noma na wasee wa Mediamax? Why did they mislead the public? Are they themselves ignorant of the law or are they so lazy they have no energy left to verify basic claims contained in some of the stories they publish? Or are they outright malicious and are looking for ways to kill the media house? Likely, they are obsessed with clicks.
In this week’s issue, Pen Cop catches a Star story headlined, “Thika man dies after steamy session with young lover (August 18). A newspaper can’t tell you for a fact that there was a “steamy session”, unless its reporter witnessed it. Police quoted for the story never witnessed the alleged steamy session. The woman involved was not quoted.
New Frame is a not-for-profit, social justice online newspaper based in Johannesburg, South Africa. It has a straightforward motto: “We chase quality, not clicks”. In the brave new world of chasing clicks, journalism is groping in the choking miasma of a deepening quality crisis.
New Frame’s maxim is a statement of protest, and a determination to re-hinge a profession so essential to the functioning of democracy that its vulgarization in pursuit of popularity and profit fully qualifies as a threat to humanity.
Clicks drive most journalism today. Kormelink, GT and Meijer, CI (2017) note in, What clicks actually mean: Exploring digital news user practices, that the digitalization of journalism has enabled news organizations to minutely monitor the behaviour of online news users.
“Research shows how, by and large, news organizations are having metrics inform their editorial decisions, from news presentation (news placement, headline adjustment) to news production (expanding or following up heavily clicked stories)”.
Nguyen, A (2013), in Online news audiences: The challenges of web metrics, writes that while metrics provide a considerable amount of accurate and reliable information for journalists and news executives to serve people in a more considered, more scientific manner, using them uncritically can lead to “the dumbing down of news” and “a disaster for public life in the long term”.
Are these unfounded fears, or highfalutin intellectual hocus-pocus? Not at all. Media consumers already complain about tantalising headlines that have zero substance below them. Small incidents like what is now described as a man dying “in the line of duty” are splashed to titillate. Lovers getting stuck. Get the clicks.
Sensationalism is not entirely a product of the so-called Digital Revolution. The whole thrust of yellow journalism or tabloid media, which has hung on the profession like a rotting odour throughout history, is to attract attention. But the tenets of ethical journalism are clear. That is what gives a media house impact, earns it reverence from peers and the public, and places it on a pedestal of pride.
