‘Blagging’? Journalism at cross-roads!

Something has happened lately in the West which has serious ramifications for the practice of journalism as a profession. The News of the World (NoW) Sunday tabloid in the UK did its last publication last Sunday after years of publishing salacious and scandalous stories about the rich and the famous (NoW is part of News International, the newspaper wing of media magnate, Rupert Murdoch). The NoW used every trick in the book to get stories for publication. These ranged from paying celebrities’ friends to betray them or go through peoples’ garbage in search of anything that could be an ingredient for a juicy story. Their dirty tricks went a notch higher with the advent of new communication technologies. It is alleged that they paid people to hack the voice-mails, emails and other electronic data of thousands of people, including the British royal family. The former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is the latest prominent personality to come forward and claim that he suspects he was a victim of Now’s illegal activities. The nefarious activities of NoW have given birth to a new word, ‘blagging’, which means paying of sources to get stories from them. In particular, NoW has been accused of paying police officers in order to get tips for stories from them. And this is what is raising serious issues about the practice of journalism and the questions pundits are asking is, did NoW go overboard in its zeal to give its readers a reason to keep buying its newspaper, or was the newspaper doing what it was doing for the interest of the public? Many journalism textbooks and practitioners frown upon the practice of paying sources for their stories. Tabloid journalists in the Western world who thrive on prying on other peoples’ private lives have no qualms about this practice and indeed defend it. They say that if that is the only way that they can access information which is of public interest, then they will pay for it. On the other hand, there are those who are of the opinion that news sources should not be paid for their information since paying them kind of compromises the information they give and raises credibility issues on the information given. Are they giving the information for its newsworthiness or are they giving it because of the benefits they are likely to reap from that act? In Kenya, we may not have reached the levels of some of the newspapers in the West but very soon, with the freedoms that are being espoused by the new constitution, these issues will arise and we will need to come up with clear laws about some of these issues, for example, whether police officers should be paid by news men for giving them information about people and events in the society. Locally, many newspapers which are characteristically referred to as the gutter press are coming up and the more they come up, the more the like hood of Kenya having to grapple with the challenges that the media in West is dealing with. Currently, the only newspaper in the streets of Nairobi which is close to the Western tabloids is the Weekly Citizen which carries stories of scandals about politicians and other famous people in society. I have never heard any one of the people who have been mentioned by the newspaper taking any legal action against the newspaper. Is it an admission of guilt on their part or is it that trying to pursue the publishers will yield no economic gain? Another publication that is closely related to the Weekly Citizen is the Pepper which is also found in the streets of Nairobi. It is printed in Uganda and finds its way into Kenya. It too carries stories about the dark side of the high and the mighty in Ugandan society. The question that comes to mind is what methods these newspapers use to get their stories, if indeed what they say is true? Some of the stories they carry cannot be carried in other mainstream newspapers but at the same time, the mainstream newspapers always use them as a source of some of their stories. It is said that journalists in the mainstream news rooms read the gutter newspapers to get ideas for stories. The earlier we in Kenya prepare ourselves for some of these eventualities the better, since they must catch up with us sooner than later.