Conditions editors may impose for the right of reply

One of the most common requests from readers who have been negatively portrayed in the media is a right of reply. However, the right of reply is not an automatic right. There are certain conditions that editors may impose.

To illustrate these conditions, I would like to cite a request I received on Wednesday this week from Jamal Omar and Juma Mbaya, who describe themselves as patriots and residents of Mombasa County.

They wrote asking for a right of reply to Gitau Warigi’s article “Mombasa is a big let down from Fort Jesus to deep-seated tribalism” published in the Sunday Nation of July 3.

First condition: the right of reply is given to the person who has been painted in an unfavourable right. It is not a free for all. The person replying should have a legitimate interest in the matter. In this case, I do not think there is a problem.

Mr Omar and Mr Mbaya are residents of Mombasa, which Mr Warigi describes as “dirty, disorganised town”.

He further says the Arab-Swahili community “tends to be too ensconced in its comfort zone” to be concerned about the “poverty and marginalisation” of the majority of the inhabitants of Mombasa and the larger Coast region.

And he concludes his article by saying that Mombasa tends to be too compartmentalised for its own good. “The Arab-Swahili largely keep to themselves. The Asians too. Kamba have their bars. Kikuyus and Luos likewise. There is not much social intermingling. That is not good for a town that boasts of being the gateway to our country,” he says.

Second condition: the request for publication of the reply should be addressed to the media within a reasonably short time. Editors do not like digging up dead bodies. In this case there is no problem. Mr Omar and Mr Mbaya have reacted in good time.

Third condition: although longer articles can be published, the length of the reply should not exceed what is necessary to correct the information containing the facts claimed to be inaccurate.

A PROBLEM

In this case there is a problem. Mr Omar and Mr Mbaya’s article “Facts about Governor Hassan Joho that causes jitters in political circles” is 1,594 words long. Mr Warigi’s piece is 581 words long. Mr Warigi used 167 words—less than 29 per cent of his article—to talk about Governor Joho.

Mr Omar and Mbaya’s reply uses 770 words—nearly 50 per cent of their article—to deny what Mr Warigi said about Mr Joho. Mr Omar and Mbaya run the risk of either not having their reply published because it is too long or if published, cut, which is surely what they do not want.

Fourth condition: the reply should be limited to the correction of the facts challenged. In this cases there is a problem. Mr Omar and Mbaya’s article goes to explore the whole universe of Kenya’s political issues and not just what Mr Warigi said about Mombasa and Governor Joho.

Fifth condition: the reply should not contain personal insults or invectives unless these were part and parcel of the original article. In this case there is a problem (but it can still be edited out). Mr Omar and Mr Mbaya’s article contain invectives such as “sycophantic critics of Governor Joho” and “self-styled stooges”.

Mr Warigi’s article does not contain this type of insults. The nearest he comes to an insult are these two sentences: “The Arab-Swahili community the governor belongs to tends to be too ensconced in its comfort zone to accept the bigger reality of poverty and marginalisation in Mombasa and the larger Coast region. This is where he should focus on, not opening up fancy parks or flagging off fire-fighting trucks”.

In fact, he goes out of his way to be correct. “The taxi guy I operate with (a Kamba) has a snide way of saying the locals sell madafu and lesos. I told him off on that,” he writes.

The right of reply is intended to give a person the opportunity to correct false accusations, not to carry out his own vilification campaign.

Send your complaints to [email protected] or text or call 0721989264.