The Kenyan press have reduced their journalistic investigations to harmless rumours and their analysis to regurgitation of corporate press releases and boring belches from aging technocrats. I don't read newspapers anymore, because I feel I am being deliberately misinformed and fed with wordy articles lacking real substance, and allegation after allegation unbacked by tangible facts. I am dissatisfied with a journalist whose idea of writing an article is to interview two self-serving politicians, collect his lunch and pen drivel mostly out of his own imagination.

Independence and objectivity in Kenyan media died with profits and tribalism.


I get more informed reading foreign press about Kenya than reading Kenyan Newspapers. I watch Aljazeera for news and documentaries that are more honest and less preachy that I would find on any Kenyan Television Channel.


I like columns and columnists but there is nothing to read in Kenyan newspapers, nothing fresh. A columnist usually presents opinions for the wide public so that current events can be put in perspective. They provide context and background and argue for one side or the other. Usually, columnists should not take a middle-of-the-road approach or mildly reproach the authority against which they argue. The columnists of the Kenyan newspapers are middle-aged ranting elites whose ability to construct coherent arguments is suspect. Some of them actually use ghostwriters to write their pieces. Others use so much jargon in their long-winded arguments that one needs a dictionary to decipher what they mean. Some are dinosaurs who have been friends with Kenyatta, and who seem not to understand that the modern generation has little time for correct grammatical presentation and use of high-falutin' English phrases.

I also hate it when I send them an article and they refuse to publish it, only to find out a few weeks later that the same article has been published, rehashed, under someone else's by-line. In newspapers in this country plagiarism is the norm, rather than exception. Lowly-paid reporters and sub-editors have little incentive to be creative, or to create properly-researched and written articles. The company e-mail is their grazing ground where they take contributors' articles, steal the ideas, and toss them into the recycle bin.

Kenya has a very low reading culture because the media, which should promote reading, is hell-bent on participating in the rumour mill and gossip express. Did you ever wonder why they have such trashy magazines about pop culture and Agony Uncle and -Aunt pieces on weekends and nothing about the most basic media in the world: BOOKS?  In any newspaper worth its name, there should be at least five book reviews a week. The newspapers bear the duty of informing their readers about the appearance of books in the market and the crust of the books' message. The decision to buy or not to buy such a book is then left to the reader. Kenyan media have refused to review my book Blood on the Runway favourably or unfavourably because they are scared of giving a writer with radical ideas any forum. They do not want to promote the acquisition of ideas for the common man; they want to keep the masses uninformed. They can promote immoral, pervasive and unethical foreign culture but they can't review a wide range of books on Sunday. That is why I am not buying or reading a Kenyan newspaper anymore.

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