Uhuru bashes international media for negative coverage of Africa
President Uhuru Kenyatta has put the international media on the spot for their penchant for mostly reporting the negative aspects of the African continent.
Speaking during a breakfast meeting with Investors in London, President Kenyatta said that it is the media’s fault for the negative perception that most of the world has about Africa.
“We have this unfortunate problem, perception problem and unfortunately it is created by the media. Every single day, it’s the negative aspects of Africa that are being brought out. Sometimes you watch news, which I have stopped watching, and you find Aljazeera, CNN, Sky, BBC – whichever one you flip to – talking about something that has happened in Rwanda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia… sometimes of somewhere as far away as Nigeria on the other side of the continent. And then when the guy is signing off… ‘This is John White reporting from Nairobi, Kenya'”, President Kenyatta said.
“I would like people to appreciate that as much as much as we seek African unity but each country is unique and I believe Kenya is unique and it should be known for its uniqueness,” he added.
In 2015 CNN’s Global Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Tony Maddox, flew to Nairobi from Atlanta to personally apologise to President Kenyatta after describing Kenya as a “hotbed of terror” on a feature story.
Kenyans on Twitter were angered by the description by CNN resulting in a sustained online onslaught on the media house.