By SUNNY BINDRA
Posted Saturday, March 23 2013 at 18:03
I have been full of praise for Kenya’s media during the recent,
still-not-concluded, General Election. Local media coverage was vibrant
and lively, and most importantly, stayed away from the parochiality and
bias of the past. I was delighted to see very young anchors and
journalists handling very weighty matters with verve and aplomb.
Applause.Yet, as we cherished our own, we simultaneously
became very intolerant of foreign media. The world’s media houses, it
must be said, did not cover themselves in glory in covering our
election. There were some execrable reports and very questionable
imagery used, in TV channels and newspapers who really should know
better.
I myself was approached repeatedly for comments or
participation in foreign talk-shows as the election loomed. But I soon
discovered one sad fact: the only thing that was really on the agenda
was this question: How bloody will this election be?After a few attempts to suggest that there were
other, bigger, better stories to cover in discussing Kenya – such as how
astonishingly quickly a young population is embracing connectivity and
technology – I gave up and simply declined all requests.My fellow Kenyans were more forthright in their
responses. Vigorous social media campaigns were launched with much
self-righteous zeal to attack foreign media and hold them to account. By
and large, this worked: some apologies were received, and a few of the
better outlets tried to make amends by covering more positive stories.
It is perhaps time to take stock. It remains true:
the world comes to report on Africa with the story already written. The
frame is the same; only names and dates need to change. The plot lines
are cast in stone: tribal enmities; horrific bloodletting; egregious
corruption; comical leadership dynasties.These media houses, please remember, are not
catering to us. Their customers are their home audience, and the story
that sells is the one that shows Africa ablaze again, too woeful to look
after its own affairs.If they want to remain relevant in Africa and gain
African audiences, they will have to take off those cracked spectacles
and invest in new ones. Otherwise, Africa will build its own media and
tell its own stories in its own way.But pause for a moment. I have said in the past
that we are very quick to make foreigners a convenient bugbear and
deflect attention from our own problems.
Whilst I was delighted with the leaps made by our
own journalists, a part of me wondered why and when our media became
razzmatazz specialists rather than interrogators of the high and mighty.How, for example, did we miss all the electoral
procurement lapses that are now coming to light, and fail to warn of
voter-system collapse? Were we all too invested in the
“peace-at-all-costs” story? And why don’t we attack our own scams with
the same vigour with which we organise protests against foreigners?Let’s be circumspect. I asked on this page in
2008: “Would a typical Kenyan journalist sent to cover the Pakistan
debacle, say, understand the nuances and unspoken norms of that society?
Would he or she prepare an in-depth report that provided genuine new
insights into the problems bedevilling Pakistan?”We must also be careful of trumpeting the ‘Rising
Africa’ story from the rooftops. These are early days, and I can’t help
but notice the most vociferous voices that attack foreign coverage are
the ones with much to gain and the most to lose from that coverage:
those who need investment and tourism dollars to keep flowing in from
the West.So, just as foreign editors may be invested in
chaos stories, we have our own cheerleaders heavily invested in
triumphant tales of silicon cities in a peaceful paradise. Africa will indeed be just fine, eventually. But only by embracing the truth, not bias or hyperbole.
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