Imagine, for a moment, that your daughter is a student at Sacred Heart Girls’ High School Mukumu in Kakamega county.
Put yourself in the place of that parent who was receiving breaking news about the school last Tuesday in the evening. A number of students had been admitted to hospital following a life-threatening health scare.
You would be having so many questions in your mind. Questions demanding fast, true, accurate and relevant answers to inform your next move: What is the cause of the scare? What is the state of the students? How many are affected? Where do I find my daughter?
Your instincts would – naturally – lead you to scouring as many news outlets as possible for any information touching on Mukumu Girls. If only to cool your nerves even as you prepared to take all available actions to ensure your daughter’s safety.
True. A good number of media outlets covered the incident with lenses that were as diverse as their identities. We sampled nine of them. All gave disjointed versions that were thoroughly unhelpful to the public, generally, and stakeholders of Mukumu Girls in particular.
For example, media reports gave different – but largely speculative – causes of the health problem; did not agree on the number of students admitted to hospital, and demonstrated a general lack of journalistic enterprise in pursuing as many angles as possible.
During its Tuesday 9PM news, NTV newscaster Dann Mwangi went off, thus: “More than 100 students of Sacred Heart Mukumu Girls High School have been treated for suspected food poisoning at the county referral hospital and discharged. Ten students have been admitted with severe diarrhoea. Preliminary tests by public health officers and medics have ruled out Cholera. Health officers say further tests and inspections will be conducted at the school.”
Now, “more than 100” can be any number. We are not told who was “suspecting” food poisoning because diagnosis for a matter such as this one should have been based on laboratory tests. The 29-seconds NTV story did not disclose the name of the county referral hospital the students had been admitted to.
It’s intriguing that whereas NTV spoke of 10 students admitted to hospital, its corporate cousin, the Daily Nation put the number at 124! Really? The latter also added “fatigue and breathlessness” to the list of health woes facing the students.
Still on numbers. Listen to TV47’s Dennis Otieno: “A total of 72 students from Mukumu Girls High School located in Kakamega county have been hospitalised after showing symptoms of diarrhoea.” However, the station gave a different figure in its rolling strap down there, announcing that 124 students had been admitted to hospital. Never mind that Dennis had also introduced Rhoda Mwende. Turned out Rhoda was an absentee sign language interpreter who never appeared on the screen!
The station added that “[i]t was not immediately established what the students suffered from; it is suspected that food poisoning could be the likely cause of diarrhoea. Public health officials in the county say they are still conducting tests.” Pray, who was “suspecting” food poisoning?
For its gallant effort to demonstrate the health scare, TV47 provided cut-aways of the students at the assembly grounds; happy and cheering while raising their hands with joy.
Both KTN and Citizen TV (Kiswahili) aired the story the following day. KTN’s Allan Ochanda went live from the school compound, telling viewers that he could see parents – who were cagey to speak to the media – “picking their frail girls” for home, and that neither the principal nor the hospital administrators had offered information. Citizen TV said 100 suffered from food poisoning and were admitted to hospital, without disclosing the source of that crucial information. Citizen Digital had a day earlier put the number of those admitted at 72, same as K24 Digital.
The trophy for yo-yoing on the number of admitted students was won by Hilton Otenyo of The Star. On Tuesday, he reported that “at least 124 students of the Sacred Hearts Mukumu Girls had been admitted to the Kakamega County General Hospital.” The only Kakamega-based reporter who did a follow-up story on the incident, Otenyo seemed to have realised there was something wrong with his figures. What to do? In his story of Wednesday, he decided to climb down and settled for 15.
Quoting the Kakamega County General Hospital Superintendent Boniface Nyumbile, Otenyo wittily corrects the story he had written the previous day: “Nyumbile said that the number of students admitted at the facility rose to 15 after two more were admitted later in the night. Of the 124 students who were checked at the hospital, 13 were admitted on Tuesday evening while the rest were treated and discharged.”
It should worry consumers of news when journalists in a big town the size of Kakamega fail to report accurately on a matter of immense public interest. It’s clear from this incident that they didn’t strive to get as many credible voices as possible, necessary to lend their stories the much-needed utility value. They resided in the flimsy argument that the school principal declined to give a comment. This is abject laziness which must be discouraged.
POSTSCRIPT: The school was closed indefinitely this morning (April 3, 2023) by public health officials after two students died at their respective homes in Kakamega and Bungoma counties where they had sought treatment. Western Regional Director of Education, Jared Obiero, confirmed the decision.
