Bias in our media catches up with yours truly

Although I write two columns every week, I am not really in journalism, a profession with an innate capacity to do a lot of good.

I only have casual knowledge of this interesting but powerful profession.

I got lucky last week as two interactions with the media provided a great learning moment for me on the intricacies of the workings of local journalism.

After I wrote an article the previous week on the impact the Finance Bill 2018, with its introduction of value added tax on fuel, was having on the common man, an audacious reporter called me and accused me of showing my card in the ongoing 2022 political succession intrigues.

This critical article came not long after I wrote another one in which I criticised the weekly inordinate generosity of some of our politicians during weekend fundraisers.

To the reporter, any apparent opposition to activities and policy decisions of leaders was tantamount to dissidence, aimed at interfering with the political chances of some leaders of ascending to bigger positions.

Needless to say, I am flattered that anyone would think that my personal views are capable of influencing a presidential election. Perhaps I should not mind too much about showing my policy preferences.

However, this accusation caught me totally unawares, as politics is never at the back of my mind whenever I write my columns.

I couldn’t see the connection between articulating the plight of the poor and succession politics in an election that is four years away. After all, I had mostly used my column as a conveyor belt to report what the poor folks had told me, then drawn upon my little knowledge of economics to gauge what it all meant.

MEDIA AND POLITICS

Later, it occurred to me that the call from the journalist was a statement on how our media is intertwined with national politics, not in the traditional “watchdog” role, which we all appreciate, but in more intimate and partisan ways.

Some journalists have become sepoys for political bigwigs. Their work is to keep an eye on articles and content that do not flatter the political funny bone of their favourite politician and to try and discourage the publication of such content, or to deliver the message that such content should not see the light of day in the future.

I normally choose the subjects of my columns based on timeliness and topicality, as well as my ability to sink my teeth into a topic. As such, the subject matter of my articles is predictable – they are mainly on business, economics, technology, education and health.

You don’t find too many articles on politics, religion, relationships, philosophy and the arts for the simple reason that I think I would be boxing out of my league if I were to write on those topics. In any case, there are people who are better placed to write on such subjects.

Politics in particular doesn’t excite me. While I have encountered political theory in my readings, I find that politics in real life hardly resembles theory. Realpolitik is dirtier, murkier and seriously subjective, while I am schooled to look at things more objectively.

Politics is therefore hardly the stuff that I want to involve myself in.

The politics surrounding the 2022 succession appears to be having eye-raising consequences on our freedom of expression. In particular, it is starting to look like the succession issue is being used to silence people, instead of encouraging the kind of scrutiny that would lead to informed voter choice.

VISUAL MISMATCH

Before I could recover from the shock of being admonished for holding a political view I did not even know I held, I got another shocker. My picture was used prominently in a Sunday Nation story in which I was not the most prominent news actor or source. In fact, my views were contained in a single sentence quote and it was the last item in the story. It appears to have been added as an afterthought.

The rest of the article focused on the profligacy of public officers who are currently living large, insulated from the high cost of living by high salaries, allowances and El dorado-like perks while the majority of Kenyans bear the brunt of high taxes.

It also criticised the President, saying he ''reneged on'' his unspecified ''pledge'' when he reorganized government, before it went on to list a litany of benefits enjoyed by big people including medical cover, mortgage facilities, car grants, secretaries, personal assistants, bodyguards, chase cars and fully-equipped offices to mention but a few.

To the casual eye, there was nothing wrong with the story. Pictures of individuals are often used to illustrate newspaper stories.

However, the use of my picture was a curious case because it was used in an article about profligate public officers, six years after I left my job in government.

None of the state officers, the main subjects of the story, had their image used in the article.

It is hard to believe that in an article taking issue with expanded government, the paper couldn’t find one picture of a serving government official to use in its story. Even a picture depicting the opulence that the article was fulminating against could also have been used, but it wasn’t.

My journalist colleagues tell me that an ''infographic'' could also have been used alongside the story, but even this was not used. Instead, it is my picture that ended up on the page and many readers who merely scanned the page without reading must have taken me as the poster boy of excess and ostentation.

Clearly, all efforts were being made to associate me with a particular viewpoint, which I may or may not share.

Simply put, this amounts to a distortion of sorts. In the book Journalistic Fraud: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No longer be Trusted, the author, Bob Kohn, writes that ''Slanting facts is the most basic tool in the editor’s stock of techniques to bias a story.''

The slant may take the form of an omission, a distortion, falsification, or emphasis.

In the case of the article that used my picture, the slant was clearly not based on an omission, falsification or distortion. In using my picture in an article that was not based on what I had said or done, it was a clear case of slant arising from emphasizing the insignificant.

PEGION HOLE ME

While I am not distancing myself from my views as quoted in that article, that failure to empathise with the poor is a recipe for political unrest, it would appear that the sole purpose of choosing to use my picture in an article where I had made such a puny contribution is an attempt to pigeon hole me ideologically.

I believe in capitalism with a human face and I can’t deny that fact. I worry about the plight of poor people. But I also believe in fair remuneration for our bureaucrats, technocrats and political leaders, and in the role of government in enabling commerce.

Having been a senior civil servant, I know that the work public officials do is important and demands considerable self-sacrifice. This fact is often not appreciated.

My view is therefore more complex than what the said article portrayed. Taken together with the call that I got from the journalist, I think I have reason enough to worry about how journalism in Kenya is sometimes practiced by a number of its professionals.

As columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote in the Washington Post: ''We in the press are routinely self-righteous, holding others – politicians, public officials and corporate executives – to exacting standards of truthfulness, performance and conflict of interest. But we often refuse to impose comparable standards on ourselves, leading some (or much) of the public to see us as hypocritical.''

The media needs to worry about the ethics of its practice.

The writer is an associate professor at the University of Nairobi’s School of Business. Twitter: @bantigito