Last week, mainstream and social media were awash with the story of unruly bodaboda riders who assaulted a female motorist in Nairobi. The attack was captured in a video that went viral.
Most of the coverage directly reported what onlookers said or information straight out of the viral video peppered with comments from the Interior CS Fred Matiang’i and activists. The focus was on the consequences the bodaboda riders must face for the assault. There was little else in terms of where we go from here – which is really what solutions journalism is all about.
Founded in 2013, Solutions Journalism Network has worked with more than 500 news organisations and 20,000 journalists worldwide to inspire journalists to integrate solutions journalism into their reporting. Across all demographics, audiences find solutions stories more interesting, trustworthy, and informative, changing their understanding of issues in a way that makes them more enthusiastic about participating in civic life.
Any Kenyan who read the papers or watched the broadcast of the assault cannot say they understood what caused the altercation or why the bodaboda riders are always aggressive and feisty whenever there’s a road accident involving any of them.
Indeed, coverage of this story has not helped Kenyans understand why the government has been unable to take forward the recommendations of the 2019 Task Force on Motorcycle Transport Reforms.
Unfortunately, what passes for journalism in such road accident stories has been the “he said”, “she said” type of reporting that relies heavily on witnesses and statements from relevant government authorities, rather than an in-depth analysis that could lead to solutions or help viewers see themselves as being able to participate in finding a solution.
While some media houses have tackled government neglect and lack of laws as the reason for the bodaboda madness, this only shows that media perpetuates the blame narratives in journalism.
The team at Solutions Journalism Network explains that, while journalists usually define news as “what’s gone wrong,” solutions journalism tries to expand that definition: Responses to problems are also newsworthy. By adding rigorous coverage of solutions, journalists can tell the whole story.
In this case, rather than telling viewers or readers what was wrong with the bodaboda riders’ aggression towards the victim, which viewers or readers already have an idea about, they should try to tell these stories in a less divisive and more constructive way.
In the last couple of days since the video went viral and the coverage began, the public discourse has been that of blanket criticism leading to roadside pronouncements by authorities in government that only serve to cure the symptoms rather than the problem.
There is a crucial reason why the media is often referred to as the Fourth Estate. And that reason has everything to do with most of the gaps we see in news reporting today. While the term is often used as a collective noun to refer to all journalists in recent years, its most accurate meaning, as explained in The Sun symbolises the media or press as a segment of society that has an indirect but critical role in influencing the political system. The explanation provided by The Sun starts by underlining that the Fourth Estate refers to the press and news media in its explicit and implicit ability to frame the issues of the day.
Overall, the coverage of the bodaboda story has been, at best, balanced in the sense that they portrayed the incident as it was but, at worst, fatalistic in the sense that media portrayed the bodaboda sector as ungovernable, dangerous, and frankly needing to be scraped off for the safety of all.
This kind of fatalistic reporting only makes the viewers and readers fearful and apathetic, which undermines a sector that employs at least 1.2 million individuals, according to Business Daily of February 11.
Going forward, journalists would do well to go beyond rehashing conversations on social media and dig deep into why outrage at the despicable actions of the bodaboda riders hasn’t worked in deterring the sector from becoming what it is. Offer insights into what is causing this behaviour or highlight why there is no data to explain this irrational road rage.
