What the country needs are facts done in an artistic way

National Assembly Minority Leader Francis Nyenze, who has said the Wiper party will not play second fiddle in the Nasa coalition. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Whether or not the President is fulfilling his electoral promises and is doing it according to that Constitution is knowledge to which every reader of your newspaper is entitled by that very same Constitution.
  • No matter how objective your report is, many Kenyans might remain cynical enough to entertain an actively contrary opinion of your efforts as an electronic or print medium.
  • The trouble is the majority of opinions will be directed by one’s ethnic affiliation.

Why should any Kenyan have to “explain” it to any other Kenyan whenever he or she praises whoever is, for the time being, the President of the Republic?

I ask because, this week, some political dunderhead demanded the politician Francis Nyenze be forced to “explain” certain words of praise he had poured on President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Moreover, I ask because freedom of opinion is writ large in the Constitution.

The only problem is that opinion is socially worthwhile only if you have formed it from facts and figures that are truly solid, objective and accurate or whether you have formed it merely from hearsay, from the excited subjectivisms and exaggerations to which the opposition and so many of our reporters are themselves frequently prone.

For objectivity — whether or not your words and figures are a true reflection of the object of your news report or feature article — is the whole question.

ELECTORAL PROMISES

Whether or not the President is fulfilling his electoral promises and is doing it according to that Constitution is knowledge to which every reader of your newspaper is entitled by that very same Constitution.

That is why your medium — your newspaper, radio or television — is urgently called upon to supply your consumers only with facts and figures that have gone through your mchujo of accuracy of social acceptability in terms of class and beauty.

For, though accuracy is excellent, it is not enough.

It must be offered with beauty and with social grace.

Yet these are opinions which a reader can form only if the facts and figures which you supply through your pages are themselves accurate, objective and respectable from the point of aesthetics and language, whether they will pass the social aesthete’s muster.

OPPOSITION MOVEMENT

In a country such as ours, with an active opposition movement, you must explain yourself fully whenever you pour fulsome praise on any important national leader in every party, especially on the Government’s side.

However, the real issue is whether or not a newspaper reporter or columnist has arrived at his or her judgement from facts and figures that are truly accurate, truly solid and artistically presented — this last one (the question of art and beauty) being frequently absent from most of East Africa’s mass media (both print and electronic).

The question is whether or not what every citizen receives through the mass media concerning the activities and statements of the President and of all his lieutenants are fully correct and objective and are reported with the grace they deserve.

Thus, no matter how objective your report is, many Kenyans — victims of deep ethnic subjectivisms, prejudices and exaggerations — might remain cynical enough to entertain an actively contrary opinion of your efforts as an electronic or print medium.

OBJECTIVELY

Even if your newspaper be objectively on the Government’s side — such as through ownership — you must habitually find a way of reporting Government things only in a manner that convinces even those who habitually oppose the Government.

Only in that way can your newspaper or any other medium achieve the multi-party trustworthiness it craves.

In short, many Kenyans will proudly tell you that President Kenyatta is doing excellently well all round.

But, quite naturally, many other Kenyans will be of the contrary opinion.

ETHNIC AFFILIATION

The trouble is the majority of both opinions will be directed by one’s ethnic affiliation.

That is why it depends on the kind of background information one receives — namely, whether or not the information supplied by the so-called mass media is truly trustworthy.

And mass trustworthiness may also depend on how you — the medium concerned — have behaved in the past.

But, in the end, your country and your posterity will judge you, as a reporter and a sub-editor, only by the steadfastness with which you dedicated yourself to social truth, to social beauty, to social peace.