Started in 1902, the Standard Group (formerly the East African Standard) has been in operation for well over a century, 122 years to be precise. It is the oldest media house in the country.
But the media organisation is currently in a longstanding crisis. The public listed company owes its suppliers millions of shillings, some of whom have occasionally sent auctioneers to recover part of their debt. It also owes its employees salary arrears of more than six months and has not been remitting statutory dues. Staff cannot even access their Sacco savings. Scores of employees have quit while about 400 others have been retrenched.
Such crises in organisations related to salary disputes and industrial actions are often fodder for the press and occupy dominant spaces. But it is surprising that most media outlets have until recently turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the goings on at the Standard Group. The staff who have exposed the plight of their colleagues have no one to speak on their behalf.
This could be because there exists an unwritten code of silence within the media industry. Media outlets usually refrain from exposing each other’s negative internal issues to prevent public scrutiny that could weaken the collective position. Negative media reporting about another media house could also provoke retaliation in the form of damaging counter-coverage or smear campaigns. Conflict of interest and self-interest are other factors.
The alternative press such as Kenyans.co.ke, Bizna Kenya, Business Today, Tuko.co.ke, Sharp Daily and Nairobi News stepped in to keep the nation updated as the big brothers in the industry saw no evil and heard no evil from Mombasa Road.
However, there was a shift when Citizen TV went against this code of silence on November 28, 2024 and extensively covered a press conference called by the former Standard Group employees to talk about their woes. For the first time, many Kenyans heard firsthand the tribulations the former employees were going through due to unpaid severance dues and other labour related issues.
When the former staff again converged at the Standard premises on Tuesday, December 3, 2024 to demonstrate, NTV, a Nation Media Group outlet, and national broadcaster KBC covered the crisis.
The ex-staff have not received any tangible help from the government through the Ministry of Labour and not even the Central Organisation of Trade Unions has come to their aid despite paying dues to the organisation.
The media is the mouthpiece of society. Media houses or journalists cannot claim to be watchdogs of society and point out existing injustices when they cannot watch over themselves or their counterparts. The conspiracy of silence over a matter of such public interest to protect one of their own or any other entity goes against the cardinal principles of media practice which include truth, independence and public interest.
Citizen TV’s coverage of the crisis at Standard was, thus, welcome. Whatever is happening at the Standard can happen to any other media organisation. Keeping silent will not make the issues go away. Media outlets should therefore not shy away from reporting on the happenings of their counterparts’ organisations provided they do so objectively, accurately, fairly, and in a sensitive manner.
