Kenya's online community has become one of the most vibrant in the diaspora. From chat rooms to blogs to listserves, they are slowly reconstituting the public sphere that mainstream media is increasingly moving away from.

The Net may not be the new Herbamasian public sphere, but it is in many ways the closest we can get to recreating that elusive space.

It not only enables discussions that would not typically find voice in the mainstream media, it also allows those that would cheerfully be ignored as lacking in "public interest".

One of the most intense debates currently doing the rounds is the perceived in-built bias seen to be characteristic of the Kenyan mainstream media, especially the print press.

The print media's coverage of the main political parties and politicians has seen it described in the most unflattering terms online.

On occasion, it has equally been defended just as vigorously. While the nature of the bias remains ambiguous, there is a consensus around one issue: the Kenyan mainstream press routinely ignores one of the most fundamental tenets of journalism - objectivity. Many argue that how this media defines the concept is often relative to the personalities likely to be either offended or pleased.

Unqualified though some of these accusations are, the concerns have morphed into heated exchanges precisely because of the faith the Kenyan diaspora, and I believe much of the Kenyan public, seem to have in the local media.

So to ignore them would be inappropriate. Indeed, it is the element of trust that for a long time has lent the media its legitimacy and as a consequence its authority.

Take away the trust and journalism becomes just another form of prose.

Yet the imperatives of political correctness, the pressures of ownership and the exigencies of the market today compromise the extent to which the news media can be objective.

Objectivity can now be best understood as ideal for which every newspaper can only aspire.

Indeed, pedants and critical theorists may even argue that this has always been the case.

But that is beside the point. More important is to begin to ask how the Kenyan media can retain public trust while at the same time remaining successful business concerns, when it is not immune to the various pressures exacted on the media today. I suggest that we borrow a leaf from media practices elsewhere. The UK may not provide the best comparative case study, its media being well developed.

However, as a country with one of the most vibrant media in the world, it most certainly provides experiences from which we can learn.

Almost without exception, the mainstream print media in England openly supports distinct political positions. Any story is thus interpreted from unique ideological standpoints.

This of course often means that there are multiple stories arising from the same event.

Interestingly, over the years, many readers have learnt to read through the multiple interpretations, through the rhetoric and the spin.

Thus, for instance, issues definitive of the right of the political spectrum are likely to receive positive coverage in a red-top tabloid such as the Daily Sun. Such issues may similarly be covered by the rabidly conservative black-top tabloids such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.

Not too dissimilar are the centre right quality press which include The Times, and to a certain extent The Telegraph, for a long time referred to as the Torygraph because of its open support for the Conservative Party.

Standing as their corrective are centre left papers, including the Guardian and the Daily Mirror and on the far left the Socialist Worker. The Independent remains fairly liberal.

It is usually predictable how these newspapers report on issues such as the European Union, immigration, the monarchy, race, religion or even Africa. But rather that deny it legitimacy, it is this diversity that has in fact made the UK news media arguably the most effervescent in the world.

Indeed, while they agree to disagree on issues that underpin their various ideological positions, the various newspapers still ensure executive accountability irrespective of those ideologies.

Politicians are thus made to live up to exacting standards expected of them as public servants.

Looking at Kenya's political terrain, ideological distinctions among politicians can only be manufactured. It is precisely for this reason that political alliances can always be struck overnight.

It is for the same reason that politicians find it normal to jump from one party to another without the slightest hint of contradiction. Indeed, one remembers a Kenyan politician once likening political parties to matatus, a metaphor that should have been laughable were it not so revealing of the depths of just how low our politics had sunk.

My point is that supporting politicians, be it overt or covert, defeats the purpose of having a free media.

I suggest that it is now incumbent upon the media to begin thinking about adopting specific ideological positions not only to provide them a much needed ideological character, but perhaps as a means through which we can begin to shape the character of our politics.

Let us have newspapers that represent centre left, centre right or liberal policies. This will in many ways help us depersonalise our politics and the representation of such politics.

Kenya's future and that of its media must be divorced from its proclivity to let individuals define its politics and the mediation of this politics.

With papers tackling policies from multiple ideological positions we may just begin to develop the kind of political diversity that this country so badly needs. Such diversity can only strengthen our politics, not destroy it.

Dr Ogola teaches at the University of Central Lancashire.