The media and MPs complement each other; they should not be adversaries

What you need to know:

  • The contempt in which the legislators hold journalists could not have been more evident than in their harping on the recent debate sparked by Senator Judith Sijeny’s Reproductive Health Care Bill 2014
  • Journalists, Ms Wafula added, have often been accused of being obsessed with the so-called 5Cs – controversy, confusion, chaos, confrontation and conflict.

A week ago, Members of Parliament hosted journalists to a sumptuous three-hour breakfast meeting which, in the end, went a long way towards confirming the mutual suspicions between the two entities.

Notwithstanding the placatory tone with which representatives of both sides peppered their speeches, it was evident throughout the chilly morning at the main restaurant of Parliament Buildings that it will take more than just one breakfast meeting to build mutual trust between MPs and members of the Fourth Estate.

The speeches of Kenya Parliamentary Journalists Association chairperson Caroline Wafula, Editors Guild chairman Linus Kaikai and Media Owners Association chairman Sam Shollei had a common thread: Khuritsane!

The Luyia word literally means, ‘Let us fear each other’. In fact, it is a demand for mutual respect, which the media representatives felt often lacks in their relationship with MPs.

The contempt in which the legislators hold journalists could not have been more evident than in their harping on the recent debate sparked by Senator Judith Sijeny’s Reproductive Health Care Bill 2014, which her colleagues averred never mentioned condoms anywhere.

While Bungoma Senator Moses Wetang’ula reproached the media for the manner in which they had addressed the Bill, which, he said, had earned his colleague a nickname that I would rather not repeat here, it was Senator Kipchumba Murkomen’s remarks that would have galled the journalists.

DIG UP HIDDEN MESSAGES

Speaking for the Senate Majority Leader Kithure Kindiki, Mr Murkomen went on and on about the Bill not mentioning “condom”, forgetting that reproductive health is all about family planning, which is all about contraceptives — condoms included.

Reproductive health services for adults is fine; they are expected to make and produce babies, and, by extension, to space or postpone births. But it is a different ball-game altogether when such services are extended to schoolchildren, whose core business is to ‘read and learn’.

To upbraid journalists for reading condoms in what Mr Murkomen considers Senator Sijeny’s innocent Bill, is to insult journalists’ intelligence, whose major calling is to read between the lines and dig up hidden messages in incisive analyses that go beyond the ‘he said’ ‘she said’ monotony.

That, indeed, was Ms Wafula’s core message. She said that while journalists and politicians needed one another, their relationship should not get to a level of comfort.

Quoting veteran journalist Joe Kadhi, she said it should worry us “if we find journalists writing nice and embellished stories about MPs and other public figures whose names dangle precariously large within the annals of the country’s corruption corridors.”

MAN BITES DOG

The relationship between journalists and MPs must never be so close as to shut the space for the naked truth, nor so adversarial as to block the path towards balanced fairness in reportage.

Journalists, Ms Wafula added, have often been accused of being obsessed with the so-called 5Cs – controversy, confusion, chaos, confrontation and conflict.

Her point was to be borne out by Mr Murkomen, again, asking journalists why they won’t splash the story of so-and-so opening such-and-such a road! Was he speaking tongue-in-cheek? I wonder!

I do not regard legislators to be naïve. And yet media people must have been bemused by the remarks of nominated Senator and vice-chairperson of the Parliamentary Service Commission Beth Mugo when she alluded with cynicism to a key maxim of journalism that when a dog bites a man, it’s not news, but when a man bites a dog, that is news.

Clearly, what came out was the reality that MPs and journalists do not understand each other’s roles, and yet, as Mr Kaikai noted, it is critical for the two to check each other in the public interest.

While applauding parliamentary committees for exposing new scandals such as the Standard Gauge Railway, the Hustlers’ Jet and the Safaricom deals, the media’s watchdog role cannot be under-emphasised, he said.

That is why a key message from the breakfast meeting needs to be drummed up: that legislators must protect media freedom so that Kenya can avoid the path of retrogressive laws that muzzle the Press.

Ms Kweyu is Revise Editor, Daily Nation. ([email protected])