Since the Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) invaded Somalia over three weeks ago, we have had regular updates from Major Emmanuel Chirchir, the spokesmanfor the defence forces.
Journalists covering an event: Is the Kenyan media objective in its coverage of the al Shabaab war in Somalia? (pix courtesy of ocamagazine.com
This is well and good and it is a departure from the weekly updates given by the government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, which are sometimes bizarre and even unbelievable. At least it gives us a relief while allowing the public to know what is happening at the battle front.
But this raises many questions as far as objective reporting of events by the media is concerned. We have been told in journalism classes that as reporters, we should not be entangled in any way with news makers. In our case now, the news makers are the KDF and their adversaries, the al Shabaab militia operating in Somalia.
What we have seen happening lately with regarding to coverage of the war in Somalia goes against this journalistic edict. At one point, we saw journalists from different media boarding a Kenya Air force helicopter to be taken to the war front. The question we ask is this, is their reportage really objective? Do you think the KDF soldiers will take them to a place where the KDF soldiers have been badly hit or vanquished? I really doubt.
This act of the journalists finding themselves entangled with their sources of news is what has recently been referred to as being “embedded”.
Right now, the Kenyan media is reporting events on the battle front as told by the KDF spokesman. We have not seen any media mingling with the al Shabaab they way they mingle with the Kenyan soldiers. Should we really believe what the media is telling us about the war, which is coming from only one side of the war?
It is a well known fact of war that propaganda is a tool that is used by all the sides involved in a war to try and win the war psychologically. It is also used to boost the morale of the soldiers and to make them believe that they are winning even when the tide is against them. I am sure that any side of the divide of the war would want to be seen to be winning the war and assuring its supporters that all is well.
Just to show you what this reporting of news from one side of a confrontation can lead to, take the example of the news that came up this past week that the KDF hit al Shabaab militia men in the Ocean. We were even shown images of the capsizing boat in the ocean. But a day after that, it emerged that people who were killed were actually Kenyan fishermen from Lamu whom the security forces mistook for al Shabaab militia. Initially, the army announced that they were suspected al Shabaab militia.
The public was made to believe that the KDF soldiers had scored a major one against the enemy! The families of the dead people have now come out to claim that their family members were ordinary fishermen only trying to fend for their families in the high seas. Yet the Kenyan media had swallowed line, hook and sinker what they had been told by the KDF spokesman. See what I mean?
I hope you now see why I have gripes with the idea of relying on the KDF or on only one side of the war for information on what is happening in the field. Human beings being the way they are, they will always speak in their own favour even when they are on the wrong.
The media is supposed to be an objective observer of events and to report it to the public from that position for the public to make its own informed judgment of issues out of what has been reported by media, which is seen by many to be independent and credible.
A journalist should verify any information that he or she gets by speaking to other sources so as to confirm or disconfirm information that they already have. Without doing that, any media house runs the risk of losing integrity in the eyes of the public for carrying news information that is inaccurate and skewed to favour one side of an argument, event or issue.
Journalists by training are meant to be pessimistic and always look for the truth out of the many lies that selfish individuals and groups perpetuate to advance their own interests, which, unfortunately, is the nature of human beings.
One question that should always ring in the mind of any journalist while sourcing for information from any news source is; “Why is this bastard lying to me?”, then proceed from that point to find the truth out of the information given.
Without doing this, journalists will find themselves apologizing every now and then for mistakes they have made out of believing everything that they have been told by their sources, most of which is always self-serving.
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