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The Standard: The newspaper for unfairness and injustice |
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Written by Ombuya E. Okongo
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Friday, 23 October 2009 |
Self Editor’s Note: If you have been following Our Man in America – as you should – you’ve probably been wondering when he is going write something favorable of his surrogate country. Here it is.
Three words sparked my desire to give America kudos: shoddy Kenyan journalism.
More than two years ago, in a rant called “The Standard: OutlandishEvery Day ,” I went after one of Kenya’s leading dailies for thepathetic standard of their journalism. Back then the newspaper’s sloganwas, “Outstanding Every Day.” Since then, the newspaper has changed itsmotto to, “For Fairness and Justice.”
But little else has changed in the newsroom.
Reading the Standard, sometimes it’s hard for me to visualize “fairnessand justice.” Take, for instance, this excerpt from a story publishedon Oct. 19 :
James Odhiambo, a casual worker at a bread factory, is still admitted in a city hospital where well-wishers rushed him unconscious. His attempted suicide followed a heated quarrel with his wife after she declined to have sex with him without a condom … Odhiambo, who vowed never to eat a sweet with its wrapping, accused his wife of being untrustworthy and unfaithful. He claimed to have been spending nights in the factory whenever they were forced to work late. He accused his wife of having affairs with other men and that was why she was afraid of infecting him with a disease she could have picked in one of her escapades. Their quarrels climaxed one evening when Odhiambo complained of going for even two weeks without making love to his legally wedded wife for whom he had paid dowry.
I’m tempted to comment on the use of the word “climaxed” in a story about a guy who didn’t get laid, but I’m going to abstain.
Here in America too we have issues of ethics in the media – sensationalstories and all – but an article like this wouldn’t have made it intothe pages of any American newspaper I know.
Where were the Standard’s editors? Couldn’t it have been fair and justfor an editor to tell the reporter to at least check out the poor man’sstory about being at the factory on the nights he didn’t come home? Excuse me for being a dissenter here, but “champion of workers’ rights”is not what crosses my mind when someone mentions my country of birth.The newspaper itself has reported about Kenyans dying in fires becauseemployers barricaded doors to keep employees from stealing.
As in many similar things I have commented on before, I know many aregoing to come after me. They will label me a misogynist like they havebefore. They will say I’m siding with the African men who spread HIV totheir poor wives. But whatever they say, my answer to them is going tobe the same: I have reasonable doubt.
What if Odhiambo is telling the truth?
Also, there is reasonable doubt that – as one Kenyan commented on aFacebook link to the story – “If he had alternatives he couldn’t havetried [suicide].
Again, I’m not saying that is the case; I just think it is possible, and the Standard did nothing to erase my doubt.
Sadly, my kinfolk will not ask questions because they are used to low standards of journalism. |
Ombuya E. Okongo |
| About the author: |
| Edwin is a widely published Kenyan journalist, humorist, memoirist and satirist in the United States.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 26 October 2009 )
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I'm not a journalist so I don't know the processes behind editing and so forth but I think the articles focusing on Kenyan News are great! Informative and appealing to its audience (Kenyans).