The crisis in the once peaceful country called Kenya has sent everyone into a panicked blame game with everyone's fingers flying about and pointing at everyone else.
The media in particular has
been at the forefront of this new sport, throwing accusations at the Electoral Commission
Chairman Samuel Kivuitu for 'irregularities' during the elections, at
President Mwai Kibaki for 'stealing votes', and some accusing Raila Odinga of
being nothing short of a terrorist.
But the Media has not asked itself what
role it is playing in fermenting this chaos, or even more importantly, how it
contributed to all this chaos in its coverage prior to the elections, during
the elections, and in this indefinable times since what it calls 'Post-Election
Violence' started.
The local media, in cahoots with the international one, has created the latest
tourist attraction package for Kenya:
War Journalism. As terrified tourists take the first flight out of their African Safari,
foreign journalists have trooped in, each with eye and camera lens eager to
beam to the world latest pictures of Africa's violence in a tone that reads 'if
Kenya of all the places can descend into such violence, then the Rwanda
Genocide trait must be genetic to Africans.'
What is going on in parts of Kenya
now is not civil disobedience or acts of protest against the election.
It may have started like that, but what we are seeing now is well-trained
militia hunting members of opposite tribal backgrounds for elimination-no, not even
forced migration anymore. We are seeing pregnant women being thrown off storied
buildings for belonging to particular ethnic backgrounds. Children who sought
refuge in a church with their mothers being burnt alive, residential estates
being cleared off tenants of certain ethnic backgrounds; in short, ethnic
cleansing. The foreign journalists know that this is what is happening, and are
here in droves to send back the story. Their excitement waned for a moment, but
is now back. The media, for all its great work, can't escape the same kind of
scrutiny that it is turning onto every institution and individual in trying to
make sense of all this.
For the local media, it was obvious they had taken sides during the period
leading to the elections. Which is not a bad thing, since media independence
and impartiality is a theoretical frame work good for passing your Journalism
school exams but not good in real life practice. Fox News is the mouthpiece for
the Republican America in as much as the national Broadcaster in Kenya
is a government mouthpiece.
The Kenyan media houses-audio-visual and print-went out of their way to give
coverage to political statements of whomever they fancied during the campaign
periods. Even then such sentiments were thinly veiled sentiments firing up
tribal hatred. The result of this was tribal prejudices, which were not exactly
dead but dormant like a virus, came to be regurgitated. Political 'analysts'
went as far as looking at which tribe would support who, and for local MPs,
which clan they came from and which long running vendetta since the migration
of that tribe to that area would bar this and that clan from supporting a
member from the other clan. Armchair political analysis was excused by 'but
this is how it is, this is the reality on the ground.' By reporting on a story,
the press fanned embers into a fire.
So obvious was it that certain National broadcasters and media houses would
not be allowed to cover certain politicians and events. Media houses fired
staff belonging to the opposing tribe, and filled their positions with their
own, just to ensure that 'the editorial policy was followed' in a Nazi like
Aryan supremacy kind of mentality and cleanliness. Politicians knew who to buy,
who to bribe, who to grease. Politicians are on record barring 'enemy' media
houses from covering their events, and inciting citizens against them. In
retaliations, the houses each went overboard in demonizing the other's
political affiliations which meant tribe. Even before ethnic violence broke out
in Kenya,
Ethnic cleansing was underway in Kenyan media houses: of staff and more so, of
coverage.
It was so bad that even when violence broke out, certain media houses
couldn't cover it adequately. It isn't surprising that Salim Amin, a
respectable Kenyan journalist, on being interviewed on Al Jazeera (Thursday Jan
17th 2008, Witness), said, "journalists were too steeped in their
political inclinations" meaning that citizens were against certain
stations thought to favour particular political leanings," and "for
the first time in Kenya, it was easier to have foreign journalists doing what was a local story".
Once foreign journalists came to the scene, things changed. Kenya,
by virtue of its geographical location, physical landscape and capitalistic
policies that have been pro-West during the cold war, is a country whose people
and policies are afflicted by the 'Tourism Mentality,' a grave mental disease.
Tourism is our livelihood, so even if elephants kill human beings in Meru,
touch them not since 'tourists won't come and we won't have foreign exchange
earnings'. Our athletes run in European Circuits and become celebrities before
they tire out and come back home burnt out. That is when we mere locals get to
know them. Their talent in other words, is not for us, but for others.
Coffee and tea are grown for 'export' so don't drink grade 1 coffee,
we need to export it to Europe. Allow US troops to train
your armed forces so as to 'provide a base for anti-terrorism activities in Somalia and the Middle
East.'
Hotels at the Kenyan coast can only serve the native you
with a smile during the 'off peak season' since they are geared to tourists
only. In fact, we even have a tourist police unit, and one tourist killed in a
highway gunfight with thugs makes it to prime time news complete with the
Police Boss swearing to 'not leave any stone unturned' while dozens of Kenyans
are killed daily with no hue or cry.
Our visibility, together with our developed communication network means
anything happening in Kenya
gets the West's attention faster and in bigger quantities than other African
areas. So when violence breaks out, the whole world sits up and listens.
On December 29th 2007,
marauding Kenyan youths hunted down people of particular ethnic backgrounds and
killed them, despite having stayed with them as neighbours for long. A day
later Mwai Kibaki was declared president and faster than Marion Jones winning
the Olympic hundred metres propelled by steroids, he was sworn in as the
president. Woe unto you if you belonged to his ethnic tribe.
The local media gulped it like hot news but hours later realized that this
was no longer a joke in media offices. This was Rwanda
unravelling. All talk of 'we the media just report reality and don't create
reality' was forgotten. The media realized that the scenes of ethnic animosity
they were reporting were actually fuelling more violence and deaths. Even after
the government banned 'live coverage of events,' journalists went further and
'self-censored' themselves, actively making decisions to give the grisly images
a blackout, and creating a cry for peace under the banner 'Save Kenya.' A
historical thing happened: All Media houses had front line pages and hastily
prepared clips calling for peace, and even shared an editorial across them. For
a day or two, the press practiced what the Norwegian Scholar John Galtung,
called 'Peace Journalism,' a concept that is peace oriented, truth-oriented and
more importantly, solution oriented. The Nigerian journalist, Oma Jebah, maybe
having seen what violence has done to his country, has aptly covered the
concept in action in the paper he presented in South Africa in 2006 titled
" The Role of Peace Journalism in Africa: The Nigerian Experience." In
the paper he quotes Galtung saying the media, through its coverage of conflicts,
can deliberately or inadvertently promote conflict as well as encourage peace
in order to "reduce human suffering, increase human happiness."
For a day or two the killings went down. Kenyans realized that we were
bleeding to death and were in dangerous grounds. However the international
media rushed in like dogs on smelling blood. They beamed picture of dead bodies
and people hacking each other to death, and the tourism bug hit again. Youths
clearly posed for international journalists wielding machetes and chanting war
cries in choreographed sequences. When mass demonstrations were called for, I
witnessed a procession on Mbagathi way. The youths were docile, while anti-riot
police whiled their way a hundred or so metres away from them.
The moment international journalists arrived in their combat jackets written
press, the youths rose up, posed and yelled as the journalists clicked away and
zoomed in closer. The youths became bolder, stoning the police knowing
international outcry would follow if they were beaten up. A perfect case of the
camera creating the story.
The moment these were beamed on Al Jazeera, the following day street
violence escalated. In daytime people ran the streets and in the evenings ran
to entertainment dens to see if 'they appeared on television.' People bought
newspapers the following day to make cuttings of pictures in which they had
appeared.
The Kenyan media forgot its peace mission. It went back to out-doing each other
in sensationalizing a crucial issue. A media house filmed armed police guarding
a roundabout of a main road so as to repulse youths using it to gain entry to
the city centre for demonstrations. Just because the City Mortuary was in the
vicinity, the reporter went to file the story as 'The Police are guarding the
Mortuary to prevent people gaining entry into it' and clipping it with another
article to insinuate that the morgue was full of people shot by the police. Of
course, Major General Ali, the Police Commissioner, himself a former Army
Brigadier, went ballistic against the media. "The US
itself never showed grizzly images in the post 9-11 period!" he begged.
The main political antagonists realized they were in the eyes of the world,
since Kenya was
making headlines beating Benazhir Bhutto's assassination and Iraq
war in all international channels. Suddenly, the politicos were no longer talking
to Kenyans slaughtering each other. The world was their arena. BBC's 'Hard
Talk' became a favourite, and Al Jazeera and of course CNN. Positions that had
softened hardened overnight once video conferencing cables were set up. Instead
of talking peace in Kenya,
they breathed fire on each other much to the delight of the world. Look how
Africans go for each other's jugular. To cement such interviews, dead bodies
and burning villages were needed in plenty. And the locals succumbed, playing
to the international gallery as the country sunk to the abyss.
Once people know that they have the media's attention, they go into posturing
mode, whether with a rose flower, a machete, or a human skull. When Congo
rebels realized that killing human beings wasn't garnering them world
attention, they threatened to kill the Silverback Mountain Gorillas. All the
western media ran to them, to see if they were bluffing. With such attention,
they indeed killed coz they realized only by killing would the journalists
flown in continue to stay and give them coverage. Plane hijackers operate on
the same posturing urge.
Politicians rejected Nobel Peace Prize Winner Desmond Tutu as a peacemaker.
He wasn't big enough. ‘Jet him out, we want the United Nations. No, we will
take you to The Hague. It's Ok, but
let African Union Chair, Ghana's
president John Kuffor, fly in. No, we want Rice! Kuffor flew out exasperated.
OK, Condoleeza sends a rep. Is she big enough? Maybe, maybe. OK, we will settle
for Koffi Annan, at least the initials UN Secretary General always follow his
name, even if qualified by the adjective 'Former'.
Come on guys, solve your problems locally-the guy has a cold he can't travel
and maybe get an even worse strain of flu from your country. No. We are the
latest Tourist Attraction. Only international figures guaranteed to have CNN,
BBC and Al Jazeera star presenters as part of their entourage will satisfy us.
Facts and figures are changing depending on which station. One media house
would report that Nairobi streets
were peaceful, while another would give updates using repeated clips to show
how the City and other parts of the country had turned into battle zones. When
Kipkelion chaos broke, NTV on 20th Jan stated in its 7pm bulletin, (in the
National and more listened to Swahili bulletin) that the area had come back to
peace after recent inter-ethnic clashes left twenty people dead. KTN, another
media house, reported that the area had 'exploded into violence after police
arrested people alleged to be looters, sending residents on revenge attacks
where ten people are dead.' So which is the truth?
Was the area peaceful or not? Were the dead ten or twenty? Were the deaths a
result of police action or people targeting certain ethnic communities? The
international media drew parallels with Rwanda.
More journalists jetted in. Beaming more violence. What had begun as acts of
civil disobedience had actually turned out to be well planned ethnic cleansing,
rapes and urban thuggery. But the media were and are not concerned with the
effects. Just the figures and images.
Terminologies have changed: Vandals have been called 'peaceful demonstrators'
even in Television footage which shows them breaking into supermarkets and
looting fridges television sets and food. Youths armed with huge machetes and
throwing clubs, stoning police and throwing petrol bombs at police and even
taunting them with chants of 'shoot us, shoot us' have been called 'peaceful
demonstrators whom police used excessive violence while dispersing'. Police
shooting live bullets at point blank range 'are using minimum force to restore
order.' People running from organized, marauding warriors torching everywhere
certain ethnic groups are seeking refuge including churches have been called
'internally displaced citizens running from chaos that has rocked their areas
as pro-opposition youths expressed their discontent at the results of the
presidential elections'!
In the international Court of Justice at The Hague,
people who similarly burnt others in
churches in Rwanda
are being charged with specific titles like "Crimes Against humanity,
Genocide, Inciting Genocide."
Peace is needed in this country and the media has to encourage it or be
accused in The Hague too for
knowingly fanning violence. It is in times like these where theoretical
frameworks of media independence need to be judged on the human reality. In the
Iraq war, there
are no bloody body bags or wounded soldiers seen on American TV. Everything is
sanitized and clean-including the boxes bearing dead soldiers. So flowery it
makes every American youth dream that their country has gone to Iraq
to deliver flowers to those unfortunate Iraq
children. Anything shown on the contrary on Al Jazeera is quickly explained by
US media as 'Collateral Damage' or 'regrettably due to Bad vision
in the dark desert nights.' As if it is an Arabian Nights romantic movie.
Conflicts create deaths including those of five year old girls burnt en-masse
in a church. But others gain from them. The warlords gain supremacy through
fear. And journalists get employed. In huge numbers. Iraq
war alone has created room for about 7,000 journalists stationed in Iraq
and the surrounding states of Kuwait,
Jordan, Turkey
and Israel. But
it can also create a sense of hope. The US
has practiced this due to experience. Just like in the US where the Military
forced journalists covering the Iraq war to report 'US friendly' stories in
exchange for rides on fighter planes as the US went bombing and thus granting
them 'breaking news', (and the threat of losing this accreditation if you
report what would be seen as demeaning the US,) journalists during periods of
conflict create another war back home: The war of public opinion that can
further escalate the armed conflict or erase it. If a people don't support a
cause, it fails. It's the way journalists cover this cause that makes people
perceive it and chose to allow it to continue happening. This is where
journalism therefore creates situations rather than 'reports situation just the
way it we found it.'
All the American media stories, from Afghanistan
war, to 9-11, to the Katrina, to the Iraq
war, are about Hope. About soldiers like Private Jessica Lynch who allegedly
(but actually never really) fought bravely until captured by Iraq
forces, but was saved in an American commando raid. About people who lost their
relatives in Twin towers but now are stronger and know 'he is smiling at me
from above as a star'. About heroes like the firemen who went into the building
to rescue even when they knew they would die. The outcome has spiralled to films
and TV series like 'Heroes', '24,' 'Twin
Towers' and Jerry
Bruckheimer's 'Profiles from the Frontlines'. The Kenyan situation will spiral
later into documentaries of burnt villages, charred corpses, and 'how a City in
the Sun, the only island of peace in an African full of war, finally succumbed
to ethnic violence just like its neighbours Rwanda and Somalia' all this said
with a cheer-leaders pitched voice of a white journalist standing in the beauty
of the receding African sunset at the edge of the Rift Valley, where the orange
hue covering the silhouetted ranges of the Longonot are defined as 'symbolic of
the fiery beauty that Kenya contrasts itself in: beauty that can erupt into
fire and blood anytime...'
Kenya is at
war with itself. Any journalist covering it has to be clear: You are either for
war or for peace. All media houses have become cheerleaders in this war,
cheering as their generals declare war on other generals whom they can't really
hit and so tell their foot soldiers to kill innocent Kenyan citizens by virtue
of the terrible curse of which language your father seduced your mother with en
route to you being born. The less pleasant job of questioning official policy,
opposition strategy, and what vision our leaders have as concerns this violence
has been thrown out of the window.
Politicians are being given lee way and extreme coverage to hold this
country at ransom. No one is doing enough human interest stories about the
ordinary people who are bearing the pains of this senseless chaos. As Philip Sib,
in his book, 'The Global Journalist', argues; it is morally wrong for
journalists to stand by and watch innocent children being slaughtered, women
raped, children being maimed and refuse to "to prod policy makers for
action to stop the genocide through incisive, investigative and consistent
reports which draw public pity and attention."
What we have is an international and local media intent on seeing more violence
since they love 'War journalism.' Again, a huge quote from Omah Jebah in his peace
journalism paper. "The low road, by far dominant in the media, sees a
conflict as a battle and the battle as sports arena and gladiator circus. The
parties, usually reduced to the number 2, are combatants in the struggle to
impose their goals. The underlying reporting model, often very visible, is that
of a military command: who advances, who capitulates short of their goals;
counting the losses in terms of numbers killed, wounded, and material
damage. The zero-sum perspective draws upon sports reporting where
"winning is not everything, it is the only thing". The same
perspective is applied to negotiations as verbal battles: who outsmarts the
other, who gets the other to say yes; who comes out closest to his original
position. War journalism has sports journalism, and court journalism, as
models."(Galtung, In Wilhen Kempf and Heikki Luostarinen, (Eds), 2002).
Unless we are saying that War Journalism is the latest tourism attraction
package Kenya
has to offer to the world.
The writer is a film maker and prose writer. He was once, very briefly, a TV journalist until he realized he could actually do the same job description by being a fiction writer and making fictional films. This article was written before the coalition agreement was signed.
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The political analysts in the media were the most shameful example of professional prostitution I have ever seen in Kenya. People who I had hitherto held in high esteem turned out to be academic hooligans, no different from the militias they were defending. But let us not blame them for this is what the whole country has become.