BY DAVID MATENDE
You risk being dismissed with a derisive wave of the hand in Kenya if you proclaim membership to a watchdog group. The word watchdog has become so meaningless that it now belongs to the family of the hackneyed.
Why? Because the institutions charged with the responsibility of watching over the Executive on behalf of the people are anything but watchdogs.
Last month, both Parliament and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) sunk to new lows with revelations that some of their members are gleefully eating with the looters of public money in a classical case of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.
The little hope people had in these institutions has dissipated. It is now doubtful that anyone will take seriously a report written by a parliamentary committee after none less than the chair of a key watchdog committee – the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) – Ababu Namwamba revealed that members of that committee have all along been on the take.
Similar ignominy has entangled other parliamentary committees with claims that reports are routinely altered after “chicken eating” sessions. Amidst this, honourable “blows” have almost been exchanged.
The stories coming from the EACC are even viler. Commissioners are reading from different scripts, with some accusing the chairman Mumo Matemu of engaging in the same vice that he is purportedly fighting.
To make it worse, recent activities at the anti-corruption “watchdog” paint the picture of a depraved institution where the commissioners and the authority’s secretariat seem to be working at cross purposes.
With practically all oversight institutions having been turned into dens of extortionists, who will protect the taxpayer from an obviously rapacious national Executive?
Historically mandated
It does not require a lot of thinking to answer this question. Historically, when such institutions fail, as they have done before in Kenya and elsewhere, the people have had only one recourse – the media.
But this evokes another question – is Kenya’s media capable, willing and prepared to perform this sacred role? To answer this, we must first understand whey media is sometimes referred to as watchdog.
For more than 200 years now, people have regarded media as a watchdog of government. In many parts of the world, this vigilant monitoring of government and exposure thereof of its excesses has gained new traction. Renewed interest in “watchdogging” by media has been fuelled by the expansion of democracy, globalisation and technology. The idea of the press as Fourth Estate, as an institution that exists primarily as a check on those in public office, is based on the premise that those in power must be prevented from overstepping their bounds.
Everywhere in the world, citizens facing pervasive corruption, weak rule of law, and predatory or incompetent governments that are unable to deliver basic services look up to media for help.
In Kenya, where corruption and general incompetence is on the rise against a backdrop of rent-seeking tendencies among officials of oversight institutions, the need for media supervision has never been so urgent.
But are our media prepared for this role? Are they ready to be the public’s eyes and ears, and not merely passive recorders of events?
Do the newsrooms have those intrepid journalists with the energy, courage and imagination to doggedly pursue the trail of wrongdoing? Are editors encouraging enterprise among reporters?
While Kenya’s media are slowly re-discovering themselves after a disastrous performance at the beginning of the Jubilee administration, they seem to be either unable or incapable of delivering this higher form of public-interest journalism.
Good at routinely reporting the day‐to‐day events of government officials, they have displayed a certain slackness when it comes to monitoring the efficacy of their performance.
Sitting pretty
Very little else is reported beyond what officials or their spokespersons say, and there is no serious examination of performance of the various arms of government.
Times were when certain independent media would come up with exposés on wrong-doing by both low‐level and high‐level officials. Not anymore. One would really have to look hard in our media to find stories about high‐level political corruption involving millions, even billions, or even small‐scale wrongdoing involving petty officials like traffic policemen or clerks.
Even the private sector, which is also home to corruption, can sit comfortably, knowing that no media house will take the initiative to uncover malfeasance in that sector. In fact, since Goldenberg, one would have to think hard to remember any other expose’ that resulted from the initiative of a journalist. Anglo-Leasing was the work of whistleblowers; it was not a journalistic initiative. Media simply picked it up from there, and has never done a good job of unravelling it, apart from reporting the news angles, such as court appearances.
And Kenyans would never have known the extent of the rot in the parliamentary committees had the rivalry among MPs not provoked them into exposing each other.
Even the “chicken” eaters at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and the Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) would still be relishing their good fortune had some snooping British investigators not taken up the initiative. Compare this with classic exposés like the Watergate investigation that resulted in the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. Watergate was a product of the initiative and enterprise of journalists.
One of the reasons why Kenyan media are weak in watchdog journalism is because there is little investment in investigative reporting. Yet this is the most celebrated form of journalism.
While there have been some attempts at investigative journalism by one or two daring journalists, the focus of such investigations has hardly been top government officials or politicians. Instead, preachers, police and managers of state companies have tended to be the target of most of the investigative stories.
Yet there are very many stories crying out for investigation. No journalist has, for example, exposed what is happening in the ministry of Land, where vital ownership documents are altered and manufactured with impunity.
With the many suspicious allocations of some very prime land lately, can’t some prying scribe tell Kenyans when things started going wrong again in that ministry, who is responsible, how the wrongdoing is done, its consequences, and what systemic loopholes are being exploited? Are the individual wrongs parts of a larger pattern of negligence or abuse?
True, it has been a bumpy ride for media under Jubilee. First, the government attempted to intimidate them by passing obnoxious laws such as the Media Council Act 2013 and the Kenya Information Communication (Amendment) Act 2013 and the Security Laws of 2014, but that were promptly invalidated by the courts.
Then there was an attempt last year to centralise government advertising, a move that was seen as an attempt to deny non-conformist media government advertising. Then came the controversial switch from analogue broadcasting to the digital platform in which the state used its organ, the Communication Authority of Kenya (CAK) to harass private media, leading to the controversial switch off of the analogue signals in February, regardless of the fact that many viewers had (have) not acquired the gadget required to receive digital signals.
Private versus public interest
However, this harassment should ideally embolden the media to put up an even more ferocious fight; it should not cow them. This implies that the more the government bullies media, the more they should expose its underbelly because in such a fight, the loser is always government.
It is unlikely; however, that media will become true public watchdogs any time soon. While attempts by state to control media are doomed to fail, watchdog journalism will be, as usual, undermined by the market.
All influential Kenya media are organised as for‐profit enterprises, meaning that they are likely to pay lip service to watchdog journalism and democracy if they think that this will affect the bottom line. In a country where the political elite also happen to be major players in the economy, it is not difficult to see which choice media might make when push comes to shove. To make it worse, some of the owners of media also happen to be members of the political elite.
Salvation may perhaps come in the form of start-up ventures by individual journalists who might take the lead in cutting‐edge investigations, as is happening in other countries such as Malaysia.
Although web‐based news sites in Kenya are yet to command substantial readership, their potential in filling the information gap in a country where the media are in the hands political and commercial elite with vested interest in government is huge. And with members of the official public watchdogs having been lured with money to abdicate their roles, journalists have no excuse but to take over that vital role.
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