If the late Gibson Mbugua, the prosecutor in KBC’s TV series. Vioja Mahakamani, was prosecuting the case against the media in this Shakahola cult business, he would probably ask only one question whose answer would win the case.
Where did you first hear about Pastor Mackenzie?
Answer: Through the media.
But we are the media, and we would rather be found dead than take responsibility for the various evils that we commit through omission and commission.
Still, tough questions demand asking: Is Mackenzie new in Kenya’s media circles?
No he is not-he has been preaching on a licensed TV for nearly a decade. Him and many other Mackenzies. Like gambling, cultism is something that the media has been spreading fast and furious.
Next question, Kenya being a secular nation, why is a big chunk of our TV and radio programming largely religious? And do not start with the tire old line that ‘Kenya is a deeply religious country,’ there is stuff that happens in this country that would make the devil blush.
We stand accused of serving huge doses of cultism every day on the radio, on TV and on our Newspapers.
Heck, we have Gospel TVs that show porn at night.
We beam well-choreographed ‘miracle healing’ and ‘casting-out-demons’ live on TV for vulnerable men, women and children who think that anything seen on TV, including WWF and Hollywood movies, is real.
Pause, ask yourself, who made the numerous Jesuses and Jehovas and prophets and prophetesses-their wives, husbands and sidekicks- famous? Who made every Tom, Dick and Harry with a zipped up bible and a dog-collar a ‘reverend,’ ‘bishop’ and ‘pope’?
We did.
Indirectly, we feed on the pastor’s flock who pay for the radio, newspaper and TV space to announce ‘miracle healing’ and ‘Prayer and fasting crusades.’
Some ‘men/women of God’ have spent so much on the media that they can, and do sometimes, influence editorial content related to their churches.
Why-some of us in the media, do believe in some of these quacks!
It did not begin Yesterday-Anybody remembers the tetanus anti-vaccine propaganda? Who fueled it? Who gave acres of space for conspiracy theorists who told poor mothers not to take their children for the vital vaccine because it was the work of the devil?
We did.
So come, and let us confess our sins. Let us confess our role in misleading Kenyans by giving airplay to propagandists and end-times prophets. Let us confess to throwing objectivity out of the window in our coverage of the so-called men and women of God.
What to do? We need to grab the bull by the horn, and kick the devil out from our radio, TV and newspapers.
We need to limit the amount of airplay and space allocated to religion in our media, to say, a maximum of one hour per day. For indeed, if religion is the opium of the masses, serving
an entire roll of it 24/7 is the easiest way to create religious zombies-perfect candidates for cultism.
Then there is training. We must train our upcoming journalists how to report religion in the same manner we teach them how to report on politics, crime, health and so on. We need religion desks in our newsrooms-manned (or `womaned`) by folks well trained to report all regions and religious leaders objectively.
They need not be atheists or holier-than-thou, they only need to be well trained journalist who resist the temptation to become choir leaders for the men and women of God they report on.
Before we do this, we need one rule of thumb across all news desks- that all stories related to matters of faith must be crosschecked for facts and truth. This includes strange religious titles such as ‘Dr Rev Prophet Messiah Jehova Aldibrontichronohontothologos.’
The rule of thumb ought to be that all miracles and abracadabra served by any man or woman of god or the devil must be verified and crosschecked; that a good journalist will keep one eye open whenever any man and woman of god ask their flock to close their eyes; and that not every man or woman wearing a dog collar is a man or woman of god.
We urgently need a new gospel in our media houses to save millions of Wanjikus out there from wolves in dog-collars.
