Sometimes our mediascape can be very confusing.
Take The Standard’s “House vets PS nominees despite orders from court”.
The story claimed that Parliament had defied court orders that barred it from vetting Principal Secretary nominees.
The orders followed a petition by the Law Society of Kenya that challenged the list of the PS nominees on grounds that it falls short of gender rule.
On the same day, the Daily Nation reported that Wetang’ula had suspended vetting of PS nominees in respect of court orders,
“National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula has suspended the vetting of Principal Secretaries nominees following a court order, which he said will be immediately challenged by Parliament.”
So, who was telling the truth here?
Maybe truth is relative.
Talking of truth, it takes a lot of courage for a journalist to admit that he never saw it coming.
On Friday, October 28, year of our lord 2022, Mutuma Mathiu – the last titan in a journalism heading the way of the dinosaur – wrote an opinion piece headlined, “When shall we stop the fights?”
MM wrote: “What troubles me is the stuff I have been hearing about the former government, which, even though unsupported by any evidence, is truly shocking and demonstrates that there is plenty that probably goes on in government without our knowledge.”
And right here we have a rare admission: that our journalism failed to tell us the whole story about the Jubilee government.
Hear, oh hear: “In many ways, the Jubilee years looked progressive from the outside, but maybe there is stuff we are yet to discover which was not so progressive.”
Now, if journalists cannot uncover stuff on behalf of their audiences, then who will?
And, finally, there are some of us who miss Prophet Ezekiel Mutua, the good old Kenya Moral Cop.
If he were around, then Maina Kageni and King’ang’i would have been more careful with their discussion of sex in their morning show on Classic FM.
The discussion revolved around the number of men that married women had slept with before finally settling down with their current spouses.
During the show, Maina encouraged women to call in and confess to how many men they have slept with before marriage.
Let’s just say it was not the kind of conversation you would be comfortable listening to sitting next to your mother inside a matatu.
Ezekiel would have definitely hit the roof on this one.
Last but not least, shall we quit calling the General Service Unit “dreaded?”
Hear this from the Twin Towers: “Officers from the dreaded General Service Unit (GSU) were spotted Wednesday patrolling the streets of Nairobi.”
Dreaded indeed!
