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CITY GIRL: Time to shut up and let journalists do their work


I am sick and tired. I am absolutely, utterly, completely, unreservedly sick and tired of all of you. Why are you like this?

Kenyans, and I mean all of you, dislike, loathe and hate Kenyan media with an unprecedented zeal.

If you don’t tweet about how Kenyan media “doesn’t get it”, you will comment on the stories and accuse the poor, innocent journalists of being bribed or “bought” by politicians.

When you are not accusing Kenyan media of  being “in bed” with State House, we are accused of being “anti-government” and perpetrating violence by publishing potentially volatile stories.

My problem is not with people who criticise Kenyan media and journalists with good reason because — to be honest — sometimes we do get it wrong. Of course, there are a few bad, greedy apples. I won’t sit here and lie to you on a national paper.

What I have a problem with is the dunderhead know-it-alls who think they are better than all Kenyan journalists put together, and those, ladies and gentlemen are — to use my favourite phrase — the scum of the earth.

Those who criticise from their high horses, how Kenyan media “glamourises cancer”, how we are “too compromised to be objective” and that we are “cartel-owned and controlled”.

Those presidential types, who, from their red-carpeted podiums, reduce our job to simply writing gazeti ya kufunga nyama. These are the same fellows who rely on Kenyan media to cover them and give them significance.

HARSHEST CRITICS

Some of the harshest critics of Kenyan media were made famous by the media.

Who, told you about some of Kenya’s biggest corruption scandals? Who brought you the stories of Chickengate, NYS, Goldenberg, Maize, Anglo-leasing and Eurobond scandals?

Who told you about the pathetic state of Kenyatta National Hospital and the plight of cancer patients? And where did you read the story of Alex Madaga, the patient who waited for intensive care services in an ambulance for 18 hours and later died?

Who brings you stories of the poor Kenyan coffee farmers? Who told you about the dog’s life of the Kenyan soldiers in Somalia? So who gave you the blow-by-blow account (pun intended) of the assassination of your favorite tweep and sponsor-in-chief Mr Jacob Juma? (God forgive his sins and rest his soul in peace).

The loudest and harshest media critics are the most pathetic non-thinkers we have in this country. They have a misguided sense of grandiosity and superiority, but in reality, they are just shallow-minded folks spewing ignorant, unsolicited opinions using the free office Wi-Fi. Brain-dead and obtuse characters without an inkling of intelligence.

They criticise the way we write and frame our stories, but given a pen and a notebook, they wouldn’t write an intro to save their lives. You see, if you have never worked in media a day in your life, shut up and let us do our job.

And if you think you are better than us, by all means, get a loan and start your own newspaper and radio station and show us how it is done.

“MEDIA EXPERTS”

Keep your childish and abstract theories to yourself. Teach them to your students or discuss with your “media experts” and let the real journalists who risk their lives and those of their families do what they love even if some of them are paid peanuts.

If you have never been threatened by a source, or your phone tapped by the powers that be, or arrested and harassed by the Interior Ministry, or summoned by the police about a story you wrote, please, my friend, sit at the corner and let media do their job.

Keep tweeting. Yes, keep tweeting about things your pea-brain can grasp. Stop embarrassing yourself by tweeting about complex affairs like media operations, matters way beyond your scope of comprehension.

Stop overworking your small mind by trying to understand how we journalists operate. Your head will overheat and we will lose you. Stick to simple things like updating your Facebook. Photograph your food like the rest of your middle class friends. Tweet about traffic.

For the activists, keep doing your thing for the dollars, we will come and cover you and your antics, no problem.

Just stop pretending that you are brilliant enough to understand the ins and outs of media. You don’t. If you had any clue of how media is operated, His Highness would have hired you to run his newspaper and whatever is left of television.

Bottom line; leave thinking to thinkers.