Why studies give Kenyan media thumbs up for fair and balanced coverage

In the last one and a half years, the Kenyan media have been under political pressure both from within and without.

This was partly due to prevailing fallacies that to be free and objective the media have to be hostile to the government and to other institutions within the State. This seemingly gave rise to a belief in a false dichotomy for media operators: To be either hostile or subservient, but not objective.

This fallacy is consequent to disconnects, leading to the loss of purpose for which institutions, states, and journalism exist. That primary purpose is to safeguard and promote the interests of people and institutions in specified states. Such organs are obliged to ensure that their activities do not end up destroying the societies within which they operate.

Ensuring that purpose, however, is made difficult by two professional disconnects. First, some operators have fuzzy “loyalty to idealistic journalism” rather than to the well-being and survival of the media house or society in which they operate. Second, others have primary loyalty to the media house or government but not to journalistic ideals.

The trick is for media operators to find the right balance between the two extremes of either pretending that the state and media proprietors do not matter while focusing on supposed journalistic ideals or of assuming journalistic subservience to the state or the media proprietor. It is often the failure to find an appropriate balance between the two that gives rise to friction within and outside the media industry.

During and following the 2013 elections, the Kenyan media seemingly found the right balance between the two extremes but they also came under heavy censorship from local politicians, various officials and from Africanists and “experts” based in Western Europe and North America.

POSSIBLE VIOLENCE

The “experts”, seemingly led by Joel Barkan of the University of Iowa, whose paper on Electoral Violence in Kenya argued that the 2013 elections risked repeating the 2007 violence, had primed their Euro audience for possible violence.

Some experts had actively campaigned against the Jubilee team, issued ill-advised warnings to Kenyan voters, and looked bad as they received three disappointments. First, the campaigns were largely peaceful. Second, Kenyans rejected the advice on who not to elect and voted for the Jubilee Team, despite the ICC charges.

According to Mediatenor (a South African based media research company), the global television devoted 91 per cent of election coverage to Africa and 45 per cent of that coverage was on Kenya. It observed that the “international media were very critical of Kenya.”

Third, the Kenyan media largely acted responsibly and did not incite election violence. They largely followed the advice from the Media Council of Kenya’s pre-election editorial that during the election, the media should “show a high sense of responsibility” and be “sensitive and avoid fuelling tension among communities.”

The consequences of the three disappointments were that the Kenyan media incurred the wrath of the “experts” for reportedly stressing peace, avoiding incitement, and being overly optimistic about Kenya’s future.

Claiming that the election outcome was unjust, the “experts” implied that peace and justice cannot co-exist and went on to accuse the Kenyan media of pandering to fear instead of fairness, peace instead of justice. The accusations, some by individuals with globally influential people like writer Michela Wrong, ended up perpetuating fallacies.

Among those fallacies was that the Kenyan media, particularly Nation, was subservient to the government in part because, when compared to its local competitors, it did not always have screaming anti-Jubilee headlines.

Yet it had reflective and sober critical articles that were hard hitting without being strident. As the largest media house in Eastern Africa, it strove to maintain its believability by being balanced in its political presentations and only the sophisticated could detect its collective subtle political bend.

That effort to be balanced was not always pleasing to those with pre-determined positions or those who believe that a media house cannot be free unless it is hostile to the government. The belief in such fallacy is wide spread and internalised by some media operators.

SCREAMING HEADLINES

The irony is that the fallacy of equating freedom of the press to hostility is not universal and tends to be confined to some countries. For instance, there is no inherent hostility between the American state and the American media or the United Kingdom and the British media.

They all have the same instinctive objective of being highly nationalistic in the protection of perceived American or British interests. The fallacy of making freedom synonymous with hostility towards something leads some media into speculation which defeats the ideals of journalism to inform accurately.

Providing accurate information is only one ideal or purpose for which particular media houses are set up. Other purposes include desire to shape opinion in specific socio-economic or political direction.

When this is the case, the inclinations of the proprietors are dominant and claims of freedom become the owners’ freedom to be hostile or friendly to identified entities. In the 2013 elections in Kenya, some media houses made it clear that their freedom of press meant campaigning for or against one part or the other. Despite this reality, however, they were restrained in advocacies and drew the line at incitements.
The fact that the media showed restraint does not mean there were no differences with the winning Jubilee government; there have been instances when differences flared up. Relations started well with the Jubilee inviting the Editors Guild to the State House, in July 2013, to announce its media strategy.

They joked about neither, government or media, having “horns” and reached consensus that both sides were patriotic, loved Kenya, and would not knowingly do anything that would be injurious to Kenya’s interests.

Yet, points of friction did arise relating to the coverage of disasters or to speculations with political undertones. With regard to terrorism, Mahmood Mamdani observed, the Kenyan media at times tend to be insensitive, “ignore their role in ensuring harmony in society,” and end up promoting the interests of the terrorists and violating basic principles of journalism.

Among those principles, contained in the Media Council of Kenya Act 2013, was to “avoid presenting acts of violence … terrorist activities in a manner that glorifies such anti-social conduct.” Since uncritical coverage of security matters tends to be one sided, it gives impression that some media unwittingly advance the interests of terrorists, especially when they seemingly fail to verify facts before broadcasting or publishing. At times, this weakness appears to be politically motivated.

The search for “scoops” at times leads to political speculations with security undertones. Such was the case when the Sunday Nation on December 29, 2013 claimed that the President had secretly renewed General Julius Karangi’s term as Chief of Defence Forces. Its front page, Karangi’s picture prominently displayed, declared: “General whose soldiers bungled the Westgate siege and were accused of looting shopping mall after terrorist attack to serve for at least 12 more months as president buys time to pick successor.”

The Ministry of Defence came out strongly against such claims, pointed out factual errors in the story, demanded apology and raised questions about what the motive was. It thereby implied that the Sunday Nation was on political mission to discredit the Jubilee government by casting aspersion to everything that was done. It was thereafter difficult for the media house to get itself out of that picture as far as the Jubilee government was concerned.

The impression that Nation was hostile to, or out to get Jubilee, however, was not shared by the Kenyan populace, at least according to media surveys commissioned by the NMG to independently test the perceptions of bias against Jubilee among its platforms. The two surveys, one by Mediatenor and the other by the research firm, IPSOS Synovate, disabuse such impressions.

The two research reports attract interest because of what they reveal. They discount claims by “experts” that the Kenyan media engaged in “professional surrender” or beliefs by politicians, particularly Jubilee ones, that the Kenyan media were unduly hostile.

POSITIVE REPORT

First is the report by Mediatenor, an international media monitoring organisation founded by Roland Schatz in 1993 in Zurich. Its offices are in many places such as the US, Switzerland, Vietnam, and South Africa which conducted the study on the “2013 Kenyan election coverage”.

Written by Minnette Nieuwouldt, Mediatenor South Africa senior researcher, the report is a positive one although it has structural challenges. The sample used in the surveys, 2,500 for NMG and only 309 for all the other Kenyan media houses, raises questions of effective and fair comparison.

In addition, her “Background on 2013 Kenyan elections” contains avoidable factual errors with regard to Kenya’s political history. Kenya’s election before independence was in May 1963, not in 1962.

It is also incorrect to claim that after “the Kenyan constitutional referendum in 2005, all LDP members were thrown out of government.” Key LDP members such as George Saitoti and Moody Awori remained in critical offices in the Kibaki government.

The tone and placement of the concluding remark about Uhuru being sworn in on April 9, 2013 “despite international Criminal Court (ICC) charges levelled against him for allegedly inciting violence after the 2007 elections” also betrays the senior researcher. It would have made more sense to comment on Uhuru being elected “despite … ICC charges” than on being sworn.

In general, however, the Mediatenor report concluded that the Kenyan media were critical of the Jubilee government but that they were “fair” and within “the borders of globally acceptable standards of reporting.” There were, however, some differences between the NMG and the others on specific issues. With 20 per cent positive stories, compared to 14 per cent in other media houses, the NMG tended to have comparatively more positive political reports and “showed more optimistic balanced tonality than reports from other Kenya media.”

There were differences even within NMG. The NTV was reportedly the most negative towards the Jubilee but its negativity was within “acceptable levels of balanced tonality.”

In addition, the NMG, compared to its competitors, was “critical of the past, but generally balanced when referring to the present and the future.” The others, the Mediatenor report asserted, breeched the “negativity threshold” when reporting the past and present and went overboard in their optimistic reports on the future of Jubilee which “begs the question as to the agenda of other Kenya media’s unfounded optimism for the future of the Jubilee Alliance.”

In its conclusion, the Mediatenor report noted the differences within the Kenyan media and also the difference between the Kenyan and the international media. While the Kenyan media were generally negative about the Jubilee government, they differed on the degree of negativity.
The NMG was more positive about the Jubilee government than the others. The Kenyan media, however, were more balanced and within the margins of acceptability than the international media that were “unfairly critical of Kenya.”

The international media blatantly engaged in “severely biased reporting … likely to shape the perceptions of foreign investors and potential tourists.” This international negativity was most pronounced in the conceptual West comprising North America, Western Europe, and Australia.

FAIR REPORT

The second report is that of Ipsos in June 2014 titled “Public Perceptions on Newspaper Content Political Bias.” Ipsos also compares media houses and is more positive on the Kenyan media, particularly the NMG than the Mediatenor one.

The difference between the two reports was that Mediatenor analysed the presentations and content in the various media houses while Ipsos analysed the public perceptions of the performance of the various media houses in Kenya as they covered the 2013 elections.

Ipsos also found out that the media were objective in reporting, in tonality, and in content presentations. While a small percentage of respondents consider the NMG, print and electronic, to be biased, most people consistently believe that the NMG is balanced and credible and that the NMG is more balanced than the other media houses which appear bent on taking sides.

Most of those who believe that the media are biased accuse the NMG of being pro-Jubilee, except the Sunday Nation that was perceived to be narrowly pro-Cord. In contrast, the Standard Group was portrayed as being all pro-Cord.

Of all the media platforms, television was the most credible and radio was adjudged to be the most biased. In television, the surprise outcome pertained to QTV which was perceived to be the most credible and balanced before and after the elections.

Its sister station NTV came a close second in both instances. Since perception persists that bias exists in the media, it might be worth investigating who constitutes that small percentage of respondents. If they are influential and vocal opinion makers, they might account for the prevalence of a belief in high circles that is not shared by the majority of respondents.

Both studies, Mediatenor from South Africa and Ipsos in Nairobi, came to the same conclusion that the Kenyan media were largely balanced, responsible, objective, and credible in the way they conducted themselves before and after the elections. The detected biases in coverage, tonality and content were minimal and do not warrant the accusation that the media were either subservient to the State or excessively hostile to the state.

In this sense, the international media and the “experts” were unreasonably hostile to Kenya and Kenyan media. The “experts” were not justified in accusing the Kenyan media of “professional surrender” of justice to aspirations of peace. Equally, neither the Jubilee government nor the opposition Cord can convince the public that either is unduly victimised by the media.

The Kenyan media, therefore, seemingly acquitted themselves well. While some media houses displayed occasional extreme bias, these tended to have limited impact on the populace. Of all the Kenyan media houses, the NMG came out as the most balanced, whether in print or electronic media, with the surprise being that of QTV.

The accusation that the NMG favours the government lacks substance. Similarly, the belief in some circles that NMG is biased against the Jubilee is weak. Media and opinion analysts in Mediatenor or Ipsos discount assertions of surrender or hostility. On balance, therefore, the Kenyan media were objective and responsible in times of electoral and political anxiety.
Prof Munene is a lecturer at USIU and a columnist of the Business Daily