Does the new law signal the end of journalism as we have known it?

Earlier this week, I received a call from one of my correspondents, a weekly columnist who was highly distressed about the turn of events in the war of attrition between the media and the State.

He lamented that the President had finally signed the Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Bill into law, and he didn’t know what to do.

Should he give up writing altogether since he didn’t have Sh5 million tucked away somewhere, or should he turn to writing about dog shows, book reviews or the culinary arts?

Are there clear boundaries beyond which he dare not step, and which are not already covered by the Penal Code?

Has this law superseded the ones that have always governed the practice of journalism, namely, libel, defamation and slander?

Having edited this particular columnist for more than five years, I could confidently assure him that he was in no immediate danger, for his were usually well-reasoned articles, free of these missteps.

So I advised him to keep writing the way he had been doing.

I am not sure whether this reassurance helped him, but he raised fundamental issues on where the practice of journalism is headed.

Is this a new era in which the reporter, the opinion writer, the talk-show host and the broadcaster must weigh every word he or she utters or every sentence printed?

Is this the end of journalism as we have always known it?

These are questions that deserve answers, first because the motivation underlying the new law is quite suspect, and secondly because the law will effectively emasculate the media in ways that have never been experienced before in Kenya.

After all, what reporter or commentator will put his job, property or liberty on the line because of what he knows or believes to be the truth?

Who will have the temerity to tell the king that he is stark naked if it might mean that he will, metaphorically speaking, be decapitated? Very few people are that altruistic.

The end result, unfortunately, is that a “hideous uniformity of thought” will creep in, and banality will reign supreme.

Our newspapers will be copy-and-paste affairs from press releases and official documents, while private radio and television stations will turn into clones of the late unlamented Voice of Kenya.

It is true that some commentators have, all too often, gone over the top.

In fact, a few opinions – diatribes really – especially those penned by self-appointed defenders of human rights, have so consistently offended my sensibilities that I no longer take them seriously or read them at all: They have become too predictable.

How do you make a career out of criticising, often using intemperate language, everything that the leaders of a government you don’t happen to like say or do regardless of its merit?

How do you behave as though everything they do or say is a personal affront?

Excess of any kind is poisonous, and I do not believe in that kind of zeal.

But, of course, it is clear that some folks have chosen to make a living out of stoking hatred for the sake of it in the name of utilising the “expanded democratic space” to the full.

Nevertheless, I feel this law is wrong-headed, for it goes beyond anything that even the repressive Jomo and Moi regimes ever tried.

A law anchored on revenge is ill-conceived, misbegotten and outrageous.

MPs are solely to blame for the piece of legislation that, in effect, seeks to punish a whole profession for opposing their own egregious avarice and selfishness.

In retrospect, members of the civil society should not have called our honourable legislators MPigs, and we in the media should not have publicised the slur. That is all.

The government must tread very carefully on how this law is implemented. You slap drastic restrictions on the mainstream media and the search for truth is bound to go underground.

Kenyans are becoming increasingly digital and if they are starved of news, they will resort to the social media which is usually full of unfounded rumours, and which are well-nigh impossible to control.

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