The ink had hardly dried on our editorial last week when Trade CS Moses Kuria struck.
We had cited a media freedom report warning that in Kenya “the new right-wing political administration has raised an alarm bell in the media sector with the fear that it could gradually encroach on media freedom and freedom of expression spaces.”
And we commented that, “While President Ruto publicly avows media freedom, his inner circle led by Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua maintains ceaseless carpet-bombing of the Fourth Estate.”
That same Monday, Moses Kuria posted his infamous tweet that catapulted him to national notoriety.
The firestorm that his insults and threats lit did not stop him. Moses Kuria was at it again the very next day.
You can’t have a worse exemplar of impunity, the very antithesis of the leadership this country craves – and deserves.
Media Council of Kenya CEO David Omwoyo in deploring CS Kuria’s “unprintable words” stated that “this is the most extreme, since independence, that individuals have pushed media and government relations to the brink and lowered the country’s dignity.”
The media is by far the most criticised institution in this country – which in itself is a good thing because that means the public takes journalism very seriously. But this is a double-edged sword.
A survey by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism rates Kenya as having the highest level of media criticism at 60 per cent, ahead of the US (58). Singapore, which CS Kuria likes to quote as a development model for Kenya, has the lowest media criticism at 19 per cent.
Respondents “fingered” politicians or political activists as the top critics of news media. The author of the report, Craig T Robertson, comments that:
“This is a reminder that some of the most prominent and consistent criticism of journalism tends to come from those in political power – at times from those with an axe to grind against the free press. This criticism can sometimes become vitriolic, stoking the ire of partisans who follow these political leaders.” You can read the Reuters survey here.
The media is a constitutional institution that delivers services to the public guided by law and ethics. In a democracy, the Fourth Estate can’t escape criticism of its performance. Its output is a matter of public record. The media is hugely influential by exercising public power, so it must be held accountable.
The American researcher Gerald Celente coined the pejorative term “presstitute”, to refer to mainstream media that is partisan to certain political, business or other interests thus neglecting the primary task of reporting the news impartially.
The world’s foremost living linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman created the concept “manufacturing consent”, to describe how powerful forces filter the news you consume for their own agendas.
KOT, the unrelenting digital army that has neither commander-in-chief nor operations manual, invented the epithet “githeri media”.
Criticism of media is part and parcel of ongoing conversations in a democracy. Freedom of opinion and expression would count for little if people were only allowed to say nice things.
But, no matter how sharply we may disagree, democratic intercourse must remain civil and issue-based to be of any value.
The language and threats of CS Moses Kuria are below his elevated dignity as a public officer.
Public officers are supposed to hold themselves with decorum in public and private. And insults can’t be defended under the universally acknowledged doctrine of freedom of speech, or even common sense. Our Constitution says freedom of expression does not extend to advocacy of hatred that constitutes “vilification of others or incitement to cause harm”.
This, we believe, is the reason the High Court gagged CS Kuria from hurling further insults at NMG.
The simple fact is that the media is going nowhere. Kenyan journalism has come so long a way it cannot be killed by anyone, however powerful they may be. The media often fails in the performance of its constitutional mandate. But criticism must not “veer into dangerous rhetoric aimed at undermining the free press.”
Tuheshimiane.
See you next week!
