Philip Ochieng
24 November 2002
Nairobi — Just before its dreadfully unjust treatment of the opposition on Monday, the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) pleasantly surprised us by what looked like a change of policy.
For years before that, it had turned a deaf ear to public protests at its extreme one-sidedness. It covered Kanu as if it was the only party, candy-coated and faultless. If it at all noticed the opposition, it portrayed it in the dimmest light.
Then, suddenly, last month, KBC began to cover the opposition in great detail and with a sense of proportion. What was going on? Significant to that question was a phenomenon that went on simultaneously at the Kenya Television Network (KTN).
When the Kenya Times Media Trust (KTMT) launched it in 1991 - even though Hilary Ng'weno's Stellavision (STV) had been licensed earlier - KTN became the country's first non-governmental broadcasting house.
Yet, despite KTMT's Kanu link, KTN could for long cover only Nairobi. Its ownership vicissitudes were no doubt a factor. Jared Kangwana was KTMT chairman when it launched KTN. Never mind how it passed into his personal hands, back into Kanu's and then into the East African Standard's. The point is that, more recently, following this last change of hands, KTN was finally licensed to operate nationally.
It could not do so, I am told, because it had no money to acquire the necessary equipment and personnel. Then last month, just as KBC was experimenting with justice, KTN began to move out of Nairobi and Mombasa, spreading fast into Rift Valley, Western and Nyanza. Both processes may have been coincidental. But it is possible, too, that somebody wanted the two companies to swap roles.
Common to them is that they are in tight establishment hands. The only difference is that the individuals who own KTN will own it even if they lose political power. KBC, however, may soon find that it has to obey a totally different regime. Thus the individuals now controlling both may find it expedient to disengage quietly from KBC and invest more in KTN.
That is the probable explanation of the simultaneity of the two processes.
KBC's second volte-face on Monday weakens the theory a tad. But it remains exciting. For, with loss of power, KTN's owners may now try to run it mainly commercially. If so, KTN's print parents - The Kenya Times, its mother, and The East African Standard, its foster-mother - might also sue for greater professionalism and try to wrench themselves free of debilitating politics.
All news media have a political leaning
They would, of course, continue to be partisan. All news media have a political leaning. What a responsible newspaper seeks is a fair balance between professionalism and duty to the party to which it may be affiliated. This elusive balance was what The Kenya Times sought to strike when Jared was chairman, Jerry Thompson managing director and myself editor-in-chief.
We hoped to achieve our commercial goals by serving Kanu's policies on paper - where, indeed, they looked very good - and yet reserving the professional right both to criticise the party's daily performance and to cover its opponents as truthfully as possible. And we were zooming!
Advertising and circulation proved it daily. Had we been allowed to go on - if short-term party narrownesses had not nipped us in the bud - we would now be giving the Nation a run for its money. One of my life disappointments was that I was not allowed to conclude the experiment to give practical proof to my belief that only through professionalism can a party newspaper really serve the party's objective interests.
But one thing I know. If The Kenya Times had been allowed to succeed and The Standard to function freely, the Nation group, too, would have benefited greatly.
The more objective of the Nation's executives know that, with one or two real daily competitors, the Nation would have been even more spectacularly successful. We would have invested much more vigorously in content, packaging, marketing and distribution.
That is why I long for a time when all the papers and all the stations - KBC included - will function fully like news media. For, as they say, the more, the merrier.
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