How bloggers have changed the game for power elite

Cyprian Who? That’s how I first reacted when I saw a newspaper notice summoning one Cyprian Nyakundi to appear in court for a case in which he has been sued by Safaricom for defamation.

In the notice, put out by Safaricom’s lawyers, Nyakundi is traced to some address in Keroka and described as a blogger with a huge following and substantial influence.

Safaricom claims that the man from Keroka defamed it in a series of articles portraying it as a thief, a fraud, a privacy intruder and a cruel employer.

For a telecommunications company that promotes its brand on high business values, it is easy to understand why anyone who says the kind of things Nyakundi allegedly said would find himself or herself on Safaricom’s radar.

LONE BLOGGER

But that is not what makes the story of a corporate giant pursuing a lone blogger whose name I had never heard of right into his village interesting.

A few years ago, Nyakundi would have had zero chance of bringing whatever grievances he nursed against Safaricom — their validity notwithstanding — to the attention of the 500,000 people who reportedly follow his blog on social media.

The choices academically available to him would be the highest circulating national newspaper or any of the big broadcasters.

But there his “dossier” would most likely be pronounced dead on arrival, another casualty of the gatekeeping hatchet job of the editor — the heavily conflicted fellow whose training increasingly equips him or her to think like a journalist, a lawyer, a moral policeman and a business owner at the same time.

I’m into my 14th year in the major Kenyan newsrooms, and I have yet to come across a single editor who doesn’t worry about the CEO of this or that big company calling the next morning threatening to stop advertising over a story that rubbed his firm the wrong way.

LEGAL INTIMIDATION

I have also yet to come across any person or entity that can stand the truth, without resorting to legal or regulatory intimidation.

Each of the major media houses now has to allocate a sizeable budget to the legal department.

The self-regulation people at the Media Council have taken to preaching social responsibility.

Critics of the social responsibility theory say that its proponents purvey a false consensus in society while serving elite interests, mostly political and commercial.

It has been all too easy for the elite, holding the knife and the yam, to sustain this social fraud with the traditional media.

But the Internet, with blogs and the many other platforms for free expression it affords its users, has changed the game.

The “everything goes” rule on which it operates can be scary. But it is a small price to pay for freedom of expression.

Otieno is Chief Sub-editor, Business Daily; [email protected]; Twitter: @otienootieno