By Dex Mumo
Heads must roll. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Oh, so a newspaper can have a white space, instead of pullout quotes, or picking some stand-alone photos to fill, as taught in journalism school, pick an experienced writer’s story, and fix it? It is happening! The other day I came across a September 2022 cry of one Nic Cheeseman.
If you remember, Nic was among the eight independent columnists who resigned from the Daily Nation in March 2018, citing interference with their independent thoughts in their writing.
“You might want to ask before you copy-paste my work these days”, Nic Cheeseman, a Professor of the Democracy University of Birmingham and a columnist for the Mail & Guardian, warns in a tweet dated September 21, 2022, that attracted over 360 retweets and many comments by the time of writing this piece.
Nic was reacting to a story run by the Daily Nation that featured his analysis of the Kenyan election after the August 9, 2022, poll. He said “these days” loudly because “I don’t write for you anymore.”
Having resigned alongside other columnists in 2018, an action in the public domain, the Daily Nation had no right to take up and use his stories without his approval.
More revealing were the responses to the tweet that hit at journalism. The answers implored the Daily Nation to apologise for plagiarising. For example, Prof Karuti Kanyinga of the University of Nairobi condemned such journalism thus: “There is also a clear case of lazy journalism on the part of the author! Does not bother to acknowledge your piece or use credible data!” The issue of lazy journalism is not exclusive to Kenya. Still, it’s a leviathan that journalists must strangle.
On his side, Mwaura Wambiru, in his response to Nic’s outcry, implied that he was not surprised. However, he averred that such practice of ‘stolen journalism’ had become a new trend among the media, birthing misinformation. “Sadly, this is common in Kenyan journalism. To an extent, it also confirms why we end up with a lot of misinformation”, Mwaura said.
Among the many comments that hit the replies to Nic’s tweet were criticizing the Daily Nation and expressing pessimism about journalism. For example, Ngasura Hillari just tweeted a response, “Lazy journalism”, and Bungoma Man was upset, calling out Daily Nation to “stop being lazy and work.”
Now, come here so that we reason together. Am I too harsh on our media? Aren’t we media observers? But, like other observers out there, I insist we can do better. As the Kamba community proverb says, a white goat vanishes in the full glare of a whole village, and so is our good journalism.
It is not that there are no content creators in this country. On the contrary, there are many good content creators, but our media prefer not to pay for stories. That is why they feel they can pick stories from good old ‘friends’ to fill the lacuna.
Nothing good comes for free! Our media must be prepared to incur the cost of having content creators in their rooms. If the Daily Nation felt that Nic Cheeseman had good content, they needed to be humble enough to ask for permission. That way, journalism couldn’t have been muddied. Journalism is a practice whose integrity is a responsibility of all of us!
