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MEDIA-KENYA: Gov't Stifling Election Coverage - Campaigners
By Katy Salmon
NAIROBI, Dec 23 (IPS) - In the run up to Kenya's Dec 27 elections, the
government is coming under fire for its excessively tight control over the
media.
Critics charge that the majority of Kenyan voters have access to nothing
but ruling party propaganda via the state-owned radio and television
station, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC).
British Ambassador Edward Clay, a member of the Democratic Development
Group, 25 diplomatic missions who are monitoring Kenya's election process,
has been unimpressed by KBC's selective coverage.
‘'KBC radio, in their four major bulletins, gave four times as much
coverage to the governing party as to the opposition. And that all of that
coverage for the governing party was favourable whereas two thirds of the
coverage of the opposition was unfavourable,'' he says, describing the
previous night's broadcast.
Such unbalanced coverage gives the ruling KANU party's presidential
candidate Uhuru Kenyatta a distinct advantage in a country where access to
information is hard to come by for impoverished rural voters.
Not surprisingly, this has angered opposition campaigners.
‘'KBC is openly and shamelessly helping KANU in this campaign. They
should not use taxpayers' money to further one of the candidates. We feel we
should get our due share of airtime through a network that we all contribute
to maintain,'' says the opposition National Rainbow Coalition's vice
presidential candidate Michael Wamalwa.
As a result, Kenyans do not have the information they need to vote.
‘'I think it all amounts to propaganda, which can actually be very
deceptive. And is disinformation, in a sense, because people are not being
given a fair chance to evaluate each of the candidates and the agenda that
they have for the country,'' says David Makali of the independent research
organisation, the Media Institute.
‘'It's important in a democracy that people be exposed to as much
information as possible to make informed choices,'' he insists.
KBC has been heavily criticised for its coverage of the presidential
candidates' submission of their nomination papers to the electoral
commission.
It gave live coverage when the first candidate, Kenyatta, presented his
papers. As soon as the second candidate, Mwai Kibaki of NARC, stepped into
County Hall, KBC went off air.
An hour later, live coverage resumed, this time from Kenyatta's post
nomination rally. The nomination events of the opposition parties were thus
completely ignored.
KBC denies that is it biased. It blamed the nomination fiasco on
technical difficulties. In other instances, it has used the excuse that it
does not have enough staff or that it is too dangerous to go to opposition
events.
Makali says the problem is that KBC's management is directly appointed by
the president, and is thus, easily manipulated by the executive.
For example, every evening, KBC has to run a tape produced by the
Presidential Press Service without editing it, even if it is 15 minutes
long.
‘'There is not much leeway. It is basically executive-driven state
broadcasting,'' says Makali.
Kenya's government also controls the issuance of licences to electronic
media companies. It decides who is allowed to broadcast and where.
Independent stations have found it difficult to win these licences.
Kenya's biggest selling paper, The Daily Nation, is owned by the Nation
Media Group, which recently set up a radio and television station. But it
has not been granted a licence to broadcast more than 60 kilometres outside
the capital Nairobi.
The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), which is charged with
allocating broadcasting frequencies, says it cannot proceed until a court
case between it and the Nation is settled. Nation are suing the CCK for
refusing to give them the frequencies they want.
Nation Media Group reject this argument. They believe the motivation is
political.
‘'The government is worried that if we had the facility to broadcast
nationally, we would have a stronger hand in terms of influencing public
opinion a lot more than we do now,'' says editorial director Wangethi
Mwangi.
‘'The government has the wrong idea about The Nation. They think The
Nation is an anti-government, anti-establishment, pro-opposition group,''
Mwangi continues.
‘'They fear if we are allowed to broadcast nationally, we will of course
subvert the opinions of people against the government of the day, which is
not true. There is no basis for that. The Nation has been in existence since
1960 and it hasn't overturned the government,'' he defends.
Kenya's other main television broadcaster, Kenya Television Network
(KTN), recently won licences to expand its broadcasts to the major cities.
Makali attributes this to the fact that KTN is owned by people, who are
close to the president, including the president's son, Gideon Moi and one of
his presidential aides.
Ahead of the Dec 27 elections, the two leading presidential contenders
have both promised to reform KBC if they win office. However, observers are
sceptical as to whether these promises will be fulfilled.
Champions of media freedom are also critical of Kenya's courts, which
have imposed unnecessarily punitive libel damages on some newspapers and
journalists.
‘'Control of public-owned media remained in the hands of the ruling elite
and was mostly exercised in a partisan manner to achieve a narrow set of
political goals,'' the Law Society of Kenya said in a Media Assessment
Report released Thursday.
Media stakeholders say the fines, sometimes more than 200,000 U.S.
dollars, are designed to drive them out of business. (END/2002)
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