Greetings, friends:
This week, the Kenya Editors’ Guild held a “consultative meeting” with the National Police Service, which, according to the NPS’s tweet that Wednesday morning, focused on the “modalities of enhancing police-media relations through collaboration, joint trainings and professional ethics” – a jargony statement if there ever was one.
But what was more striking to me were the photos accompanying that tweet. There were senior editors striking big smiles alongside the same police o cers that have been at the helm of many weeks of brutal targeting of citizens and protestors, and of journalists themselves. In the photo, they were smiling with their eyes, like they were just about to cut a birthday cake!
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Macharia Gaitho himself in one of those photos, striking a pose between two senior police bosses – just weeks after being followed, roughed up, stu ed into a car and abducted by cops, within the precincts of a police station. (He was then returned a few hours later and the police explanation was, “Sorry, we were looking for another Gaitho.” But it is also perhaps of note that Macharia Gaitho wasn’t smiling so much with his eyes in that photo from the consultative meeting – just his teeth were showing).
Still, If you’ve been in Kenya or following the news from the country in the past eight weeks of so, you’ll understand why this consultative meeting, and the exuberant posts from top journalists associations summarising the consultations, is so jarring, and such an obvious own goal when it comes to eroding public trust. I say this as a working journalist myself, as a journalist who has worked with many of those who were at this meeting and many of whom I consider my friends and colleagues.
I know the argument that’s coming – that the media and police do collaborate, and need to foster good relations, even if it’s just for the sake of the many stories that need to quote police as sources, and also so that the police can “allow” the media to do their work. I’m not even necessarily saying that police and media should not meet and talk (though personally, I wonder what there was to discuss). It’s my astonishment at the lack of media-savvy and communications-common-sense that this meeting epitomises, for a media fraternity whose work is in the public interest.
My incredulity goes even further back to a few weeks ago, when journalists conducted their own protest for media freedom, with the slogans “shoot not the messenger” (prompting the question: so, who should be shot?) and “we are not criminals” (implying that others, non-journalists presumably, are criminals). Really, it’s the tone-deafness and conservativeness of it all, with my senior colleagues defaulting to the same time-worn “multi-stakeholder dialogue consultations”, and then tweeting enthusiastically like that phrase means something important happened. In all honesty, if that meeting had to happen, it should have been closed-door, no cameras, no photos, and certainly no social-media fanfare.
As I reflect on this entire episode, I’m left wondering: who is this charade really for? Certainly not for the public, who see through the performative nature of it all. At the end of the day, journalism’s credibility is built on the trust of the people, and that trust is hard-won and easily lost. When media representatives are seen cozying up to the same forces that have been seen to oppress, it sends a confusing and disheartening message. The optics of these “consultative meetings,” coupled with the cheery photo-ops, do little to instill confidence in an already skeptical audience. Instead, they exacerbate the perception that the media is out of touch with the real issues facing the people—issues they should be bringing to light, not glossing over with smiles and handshakes.
In the end, the strength of our profession lies not in how well we can get along with those in power, but in how courageously we can stand up to them when it matters most. That is the essence of journalism—and it’s worth remembering, even when the cameras are rolling.
In the meantime, here’s:
What I’m Reading: The incredibly insightful ethnographic book Migrants and Masculinity in High-Rise Nairobi, available on that link as a Creative Commons free pdf download. For a quick summary of the essence of the book on how young male migrants in urban Nairobi navigate the tension between expectations of success and repetitive failure, you can read this essay by the author Mario Schmidt.
What I’m Watching: $25,000 vs. $25,000,000 Lifestyles, Compared by Johnny Harris. Filmmakers and animators, hit me up – we need to do the Kenyan version of this, especially in the light of the recent farcical cabinet “vetting” exercise. What I’m Listening to: New episodes from Cautionary Tales, one of my all-time favourites. This season has one sweet episode titled “The Rise and Fall of a Megalomaniac”. I won’t spoil it for you.
My best,
Christine Mungai | Curator, Baraza Media Lab