Tackle integrity concerns in media

There are problems a Kenyan election creates that rarely get visibility: and one of them is the race of the media into graft.

For, of course, sometimes the reason for your wall-to-wall coverage on what each politician said today, or even each commentator from each possible party or position said today, is because your editors on publications and broadcast channels, across the nation, genuinely believe that it’s all you are interested in and want to know.

But let me break this gently: another reason you get so much political news is that the politicians pay journalists to cover it.

Now, we have some different types of media.

We have mainstream media, where journalists are paid salaries or per article payments and we have individuals who run their own news services.

We often call them bloggers, but they mostly aren’t bloggers. Bloggers publish personal material and personal accounts on their own special interests, generally opinions. That is not the same as a small or specialist online news service.

Yet, the individuals working on small online news services are often self-employed. They tend to make a living from sponsored content and advertising, so if they run a politician’s story for some ‘facilitation’ money, is it a bribe?

Well, under the Bribery Act, unfortunately, it is, if it confers any advantage on the politician. The way for it not to be a bribe is for the politician to officially buy sponsored content, that is marked as sponsored content, and with an invoice.

That little brown envelope of unaccounted-for facilitation constitutes a bribe and every politician that hands them to journalists is liable to a fine of up to Sh5 million or up to 10 years in prison or both.

So, here’s an idea: if you think your opponent is paying ‘facilitation’ to media, why don’t you do us all a favour and get the photos or the tape and go to the anti-corruption commission and report them: and that will do the excellent thing of cleaning up the media for all of us.

Because the wave of ‘facilitation’ payments, for attending their press conferences, for receiving their press releases and for running their stories, giving them airtime or column space, is infecting many journalists.

And when a journalist is additionally being paid a media salary or per story by a media house, there is additionally an expectation that they are acting with that media house’s ‘space’ based on editorial priorities and interest, and not just to line their own pockets.

Sadly, the recent descent into corruption by journalists has been stark. Even those in corporate news or PR have been shocked by the scale of it this time.

Some journalists are not interested in a single interview, even on a subject that would prevent millions of Kenyan deaths a year unless a bribe comes with it.

The fact is, almost any ‘national interest’ or any other story will now be met with requests for money.

‘Facilitation’ money

The team I am closest to was recently asked for money to cover a story by one journalist from one of the leading media houses, but only by one.

Happily, and what bliss it’s the same space I still work in, no-one I have talked to in business news has been asked for bribes by any journalist from Nation Media Group #ticker:NMG . That doesn’t mean it runs every story.

It means it decides on the story’s merits and there are no bribe requests in that process.

Standard has also got better.

No one I know has experienced any journalist at the People Daily ever asking for bribes, so hats off.

But others are doing a lot worse. At one of the small TV stations, they refuse point blank and at every level to take any story with ‘facilitation’.

I don’t deal with political journalists. My space is business, health and science.

But right now every Kenyan is getting a whole lot less of any of those, behind the new corruption bar. So anyone who wants to bust it, call me: I’ll report it!