Not all on the Internet is  true, so be very cautious

Sir Isaac Newton once said, “If it is on the Internet, it is absolutely true.”  This guidance from one of the greatest scientists to ever walk this earth has served users of the Worldwide Web well for decades since. Whenever someone tried to sow seeds of doubt, they just fell back on these immutable words and trusted the Internet.

Except Newton didn’t really say that. He couldn’t possibly have because he died in 1727, hundreds of years before we began tinkering with early versions of what became today’s Internet. If you Google that quote in future, it will probably show up credited to Isaac Newton, partly because of this article.

Gem Central MCA Fred Ouda is certainly one of those who believes in Newton’s supposed aforementioned quote. The local representative from Siaya County was so upset by a tweet from a parody account that he had to get his views on the national news.

“If I addressed a press conference in a suit, I would have  been only on a vernacular station,” he told me on Friday. “I had to strip to get everybody’s attention.”

PARODY ACCOUNT

Yes, he methodically undressed as photojournalists recorded his striptease for a televised shaming. Left with nothing but boxer briefs, his backside then met with a leather seat where he proceeded to dress down the deputy president.

“Let them go back to their flying toilets, you can’t help a fly that wants to follow a corpse to the grave. #Kibera.” That was the tweet from the parody account @WilliamRutoh on the night-time protests in Kibera, where some ongoing government projects were  damaged. The member of the Siaya county assembly saw it as a direct attack on Raila Odinga, and saw it fit to defend the former prime minister in the best way he saw fit. The deputy president’s official account is actually @WilliamsRuto but Mr Ouda is not one to let facts get in the way of a good story.

The worldwide Web has brought almost all the world’s information to a little glowing rectangle that fits into your pocket, or variations of it. In a world with so much data, a huge chunk of it is bound to be questionable. The discerning Internet user has learnt to sift through the chaff to find the wheat.

Mr Ouda, passionate as he is, does not tweet. “I’ve got people who go everywhere with me who tweet for me,” he added helpfully. I know my way around the Internet but I couldn’t find him on Twitter. His “people”, if they exist, have been lying to him.

“Users are allowed to create parody, newsfeed, commentary, and fan accounts on Twitter,” the microblogging site says on its support page. The Ruto parody account is not breaking Twitter’s terms of service and even says on the bio page “Keep calm, it is a parody.” I guess the good representative of the people of Gem Central wouldn’t recognise a parody even if it walked up to him and introduced itself. But his naïveté around the magic and deception of the Internet, while amusing, is not new. Former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner famously held up a satirical article from the humour news website, The Onion, to counter criminal charges against him.

CREDIBLE SOURCES

Because there seems to be widespread confusion about this, consider this a public service. It might come as a surprise to many, but not everything on the Internet is true. In fact, a lot of it  is false.

There’s no sure-fire universal way of telling what’s accurate and what’s not, but it helps to be sceptical. “In God we trust, for everyone else we verify,” is a guiding principle in journalism and I’d suggest it for the Internet age as well.

Before you get all hot under the collar, counter-check with another source if what you’re consuming is credible. As a rule, I distrust everything I read until I  verify the facts from independent sources.  It is an occupational hazard that adds an extra layer of caution and saves us from making monumental reporting mistakes or — even worse — embarrassing ourselves.

That social media has “killed” countless boldface names before they were actually dead is proof enough of how the Internet plays fast and loose with facts. One other public service announcement: nothing on the Internet is worth dropping your clothes for. Trust me.

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Why this shaming of company bosses?

JONATHAN CIANO is a likeable man. In the time he ran Uchumi, he became the poster boy for the successful turnaround artist who pulled the supermarket chain from the brink of bankruptcy back to vibrant territory. In person, he is charming and attentive, traits many in his position lack. That is why it was strange when the board publicly fired him for “gross negligence and gross misconduct”. 

The board needed a fall guy, one senior banker speculated to me last week. The next day, Lucy Mbugua was out as MD of the Kenya Airports Authority in equally public fashion.

Like with Ciano, the board had fired her, this time over corruption allegations. In both instances, several C-level executives were also let go as part of the purge. Is the new trend in corporate Kenya to publicly shame business leaders when something crops up? These are truly strange times. 

If anything, the average senior executive is a golf-playing, whisky-sipping, detached boss with all the excitement of a brick wall.

Those are offences that junior employees in the early stages of their careers, not accomplished managers, get sacked for.

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Show at NMG must go on

Tuesday is Linus Gitahi’s (left) last day as CEO of the Nation Media Group. He is calling it a day after leading East Africa’s largest media house since November 2006. “You know you’re just on a sabbatical, you’ll come back,” Mr Gitahi told me in mid-2012 when he was the first to arrive at the launch of my CNBC Africa show Eye on Kenya.

Six months later, I was back at NTV.  When the station wanted to build new studios, the usually noisy NTV newsroom moved downstairs to the 5th floor, where his office also was.

Clearly a big fan of management by walking around, he stopped by often to chat with folks and connect. We’ll miss his excellent guidance and leadership. So long LG, and welcome, Joseph Muganda.

The show must go on.

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TALK BACK 

Feedback: On why we shouldn’t let others run our lives

I totally agree with you. Often we don’t live our lives; we live the way society dictates. I have learnt  not to conform to the patterns of this world, no matter how impressive everything and everyone else seems to be. What if what society expects from you doesn’t happen; will you kill yourself? Take a day at a time find your own life path,  and success and what you are looking for will follow you.

Bellah Wanga

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I fully agree with you. The pressure to conform can sometimes be overwhelming, and often it makes people make mistakes. A good example is the story on girls as young as 14 who are becoming mothers in Seme in Kisumu Country. Many of these girls are pressured by uncles, parents, or friends to get married, only to realise later that such decisions are unhelpful. The same thing is happens with FGM – extreme social pressure at play.

Nashon Tado

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Your article reminded me of one Ralph Waldo Emerson who said: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” 

We always want to be like someone else, and in the process failing to realise who we are. I agree that the we can only become better the minute we decide to live life on our own terms.

Andrew Kamau

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Trust in yourself, believe that you can do it with or without anyone’s approval and you don’t need anyone to tell you otherwise. The greatest formula to failure is trying to please everyone. Do you want freedom, or do you want to imprison yourself because of somebody else’s opinion?

I am me and if you don’t like it, fine! A person who does not care  about what the general public thinks is okay. Never let anyone dictate your life.

My everyday philosophy is, “Do what you love, love what you do”. Take control of your own life, do what you know is right and let go of negativity.

Choosing what you want in life is an art best guided from the heart. Sometimes we make decisions because we are afraid, or because it seems the right thing to do, or because we feel we have no option. Choose what you love, while always remembering that with choice comes responsibilities.

It sometimes means making changes that can feel painful and difficult. But what is important is that you commit to choosing the life you love for yourself.

Choose what it is really you want and then create the conditions that will get you closer to your goal. Take responsibility for your life and happiness and fulfill yourself the best way you can and you will find this the best way to live.

Debbie Ouma