State out to control news distribution under the pretext of digital migration

Governments that want to institute dictatorship start by dominating and directing the media and information systems.

How the media system is structured is, therefore, a significant indicator on whether a nation is democratising or sliding into a dictatorship.

This desire to dominate and control information is at the centre of the current stand-off over digital migration. That is what Kenyans must resist. Government involvement in media matters, no matter how sugar coated, is usually a direct invitation to tyranny.

Anyone above the age of 40 years will remember life in Kenya in the 1980s and 1990s; the life before freedom. Today we call them “the dark days”.

There was simply no information. There was only one State-owned television and radio station, the only source of electronic news from local and international sources. News was what the government wanted us to know, not what we felt we should know. News followed a rigid government chain of command, with the President coming first, then down the ladder all the way to the chief.

CENSORED

Though the print media was in private hands, it was greatly censored and heavy penalties awaited those who had the courage to be independent. In fact, when I was taken in for detention, I was shocked to find some reporters and editors had also been taken in.

The only books and newspapers available were those that the government allowed you to read. Everything came through the airport, and the police were there to go through every bag and confiscate any literature that was viewed as “inappropriate”. That is how the dictatorship of that era was created and sustained. Even the fax machine as a means of relaying and receiving information was banned.

Then came Google.  I think that if the government had anticipated how the Internet would change the business of information, they would have found ways to control it.

Within a decade, this country has witnessed a revolution in access to information. Any Kenyan with a mobile phone and a few data bundles can read anything and everything they desire.

EMPOWERED PEOPLE

This flow of information has empowered many people. Sites that give information on medical conditions have helped people understand their ailments and interact better with their doctors. Law statutes on decided cases that even courts of law did not have in their libraries are now available at the click of a button on Kenya Law Reports. 

In the midst of this information revolution, we have forgotten that government has always been and remains the single most critical threat to access to information even though the Constitution guarantees this.

All governments are almost invariably a threat to the people’s freedom. That threat to freedom and access to information becomes a crisis in a nation like Kenya where democracy is struggling and effective access to information is critical in helping people understand what the State is up to.

Information is critical to self-government. Information is critical to enabling citizens, especially in nations emerging from years of rigid State control like Kenya, exercise their freedoms responsibly.

THREATEN FREEDOM

Sometimes, government threatens our freedoms through the human frailty of its officers. As the coercive power of the State has to be exercised by human beings, it ends up in the hands of an excitable officer, who sees it as an instrument to assert himself over others. The result is abuse of freedoms.

This proclivity of government to abuse freedoms is what we have forgotten. We have been awash with so many freedoms that we did not see the danger lurking.

And the government, like a leopard, has been on the Muu tree, biding its time, and now it has pounced. The government knows that it has already lost the war on flow of information.

So it doesn’t care any more about other kinds of information but the one that can affect its hold on power and one that still reaches and influences the poor and illiterate citizens. It is concerned about political information. It doesn’t want corruption scandals unearthed, policies criticised, or failings exposed.

CONTROLLING MEDIA

In the past two years, there have been many attempts at controlling the media. We have had laws proposed to control journalists through licensing procedures. We have had crimes created for practice of journalism and hefty fines imposed for these crimes. We have seen bloggers critical of government arrested and charged while those who support government are allowed to incite ethnic hatred.

Now we are seeing attempts by the government to control the distribution of television news through the excuse of migrating the country into a digital era.

These actions by the government are planned and purposeful. They are strategic and carefully choreographed. They are political. We must open our eyes and see the Leopard on the Muu tree.

If we don’t wake up and defend the freedoms under threat, soon we shall lose even those that we are enjoying. We must not take it for granted that we will always have access to the Internet. In some countries, the government is controlling that too, and there is no telling what Jubilee may try to borrow next.

FRAGILE THING

Our refuge is in eternalising the words of Ronald Reagan:

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”

For now, they have gone for the journalists. Soon they will come for everyone.

The leopard cannot eat more than one sheep. But it kills the whole flock.

Mr Odinga, a former prime minister of the Republic of Kenya, is the leader of ODM and co-principal of Cord