The media might forget what it reported yesterday. But The Media Observer never forgets.
We have not forgotten about a certain priest that sold our media space two weeks ago.
We will not go back there. We do not want a memo from the CEO for writing over his memo on the subject. Besides, one Peter Mwaura, the public editor at Nation Centre, explained why the media never got into trouble with that priest that ‘suspiciously died’ in some hotel in Murang’a.
Very clever fellow, Peter Mwaura is – he beat us to this week’s Mediascape.
But let us take the battle to his door on these matters of how we report suspected illicit sex- the kind that even Jesus himself didn’t know what to do about. When he was confronted with “evidence” of a woman caught in the act, the good Lord blushed and started writing on the dust.
How then, would the good Lord have reacted to Stephen Oduor’s story reported by the Nation on May 23?
Let us jog your memory. The story ran thus:
“A couple from Tana River County will have to postpone their wedding for a year after admitting to their pastor that they were engaging in pre-marital sex.
“Alice Hawachu and Peter Menza (not their real names) of the Evangelical Church were due to marry at King’s Glory Church in Malindi on 12 August as previously announced in the church.
“However, during the couple’s confession and counselling session, Mr Menza, who is a new member of the church, confessed to engaging in intercourse with his future wife when asked if they had ever been intimate before.”
So far so good: These two sinners’ privacy remains ‘unstoned.’ Alice Hawachu and Peter Menza are not their real names, or so the writer informed us.
But then, it does not take a microscope to trace these sinners on Google map.
All it takes are a few subtle leads. Leads like a Helida Kase that the reporter informed us was “a prayer leader at the church.”
“They were instructed to use the time to repent and pray, but also to make sure that they attend couples’ counselling every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday evening for that time,” said Helida Kase, a prayer leader at the church.
Another subtle lead is an Agnes Kazungu who was quoted saying that the reported wedding that never happened was not the first to be suspended or dismissed over illicit sex (read ‘there was precedence of illicit sex’ in this particular church).
“A pastor’s wedding was suspended just two weeks before the wedding because the bride-to-be spent a night at his place after the vigil, they swore they never had sex, the lady was a virgin and was ready to prove it, but they were told to suspend it for three months, which they did,” said Agnes Kazungu, an elder in the church.
The last subtle lead was pastor himself, the one that when, confronted with reports of the sinning couple, did not respond like Christ (let he who has not sinned be the first to cast the first stone) but said instead: Let he that told you this be stoned.
“Whoever gave you that information was wrong and should not have done it, it is against the ethics of the denomination,” he said.
In the wake of rising sceptics about religion and men of cloth, we submit that this pastor be hired to teach media ethics in our journalism schools.
For indeed, it is wrong, not just in denominational ethics but also in media ethics, to violate people’s privacy in this manner.
Do not make us go back to the priest that died in Murang’a. Like Peter Mwaura said, we, the media, are lucky that the priest is dead – or the man of the cloth would have sued us for millions for defamation.
