I ACCUSE THE MEDIA

Folks, I want to start by apologising for having taken a long leave of absence. It has been a long time since. But I want to admit here and now that even as I write this peace, I don't have the energy and psyche.

I know one is bound to wonder what happened to the writing bug but I will say I have never lost the will to say what is going on in my my mind, than it happened in the last two weeks.

Anyway since I have started I will try.

What happened immediately after the 2007 general election left me baffled and lost for words. I am yet to come to terms with how people who have grown together started hacking each other to death while ensuring that they burnt everything to the ground so that the survivors could not rise up again.

Call me a coward if you will but I could not bring myself to watch TV as houses burnt and people lost millions of shillings that that they have invested in the property. This time though it was not just that other person because I also lost something though little compared to other people.

I want to stand corrected, but I accuse the media for what happened.

In journalism school we were taught that media managers could adopt what is called the hypodermic needle or magic bullet, otherwsie refered to as the theory of propaganda. In the theory audiences were perceived as "passive and equally susceptible to media messages. The media were thought to have the ability to shape public opinion and persuade the masses toward nearly any point of view desired by the author of that particular text".

I know there are people who have dismissed this but since Kenya is still a developing country, the possibility of controlling the masses in hypodermic needle style is real.

Sample this,

• how do you explain when persons who can barely make ends meet are able to make calls to five or six radio stations expressing their opinion other than to control the minds of listeners.
• Why would a section of the political class hold press conferences daily while giving positions that they cannot support with facts, other than to control the minds of the audience.

This country was on the verge of collapse and it is not out of the woods yet because we are still believing what a section of the political class is telling us. Anger and acrimony is still embeded in the hearts of the people. But the people who stand accused are media practitioners.

For example media spinners were ready to go any length to have the stories of their parties published. Statements were prepared and the only thing that journalists could do was to cut out the address of spinners and insert their names and pronto the story would appear in their own bylines.

Off course there are individual journalist who benefited immensely by moonlighting for the political parties as consultants. Others were deeply compromised while others were paid peanuts to advance the interests of their masters.

Two it was a harvest time for the media, adverts inundated media houses as they were flying left right and center. Some of the adverts bordered on defamation and yet they were accepted, run on prime time but branded with "useless" disclaimers. After all the effect would be the same with or without a disclaimer.

Journalism ethics was thrown out of the window and stories were run with little considerations about their impact and effect.

And when finally Kibaki was declared winner of the disputed elections, the people had already been prepared and all that remained was for the river to burst at the seams.

When it did it was catastrophic, millions lost through looting and fire, deaths, rapes and thousands of people left homelessness, all because of a media that was ready to swallow anything that was given to it by scheming politicians who had an end to achieve.