The Kenyan Press Rant

I must confess that I do not own a TV. I do not see the need to have one. After watching Kenyan TV for a few months I decided that it was just extra baggage unless I got DSTV or GTV meaning I would have to find time to sit and actually watch TV. When I came back from Germany, I just could not stand the way our reporters talk and report things. The news reports are stretched unnecessarily long and they report on trivial matters almost as if to mask the viewers from things that matter like development.

On TV presenters, KTN's Njoroge Mwaura phonetics are terrible. He accents and cuts sentences at totally the wrong places making him stress the wrong thing. He seems to be the role model of all the new staff that KTN has hired.

Beatrice Marshal is following Mwaura's footsteps and could someone please tell her not to be wearing those trouser suites...she is tall thin, wears high collar shirts ala Karl Lagerfeld to hide her long neck and she would look nice in a long dress since KTN has taken the format of having presenters stand in front of the desk before going to the news is not really good for her.

The NTV reporters are kurutus. An report that has stuck to my mind is the time when Chinese President Hu Jin Tao was in Kenya and the local press were told to ask 1 question... a reporter from NTV was given the task and he wasted it on a totally irrelevant question about some shenanigans that took place the day before in Parliament. Hallo this was the Chinese president...think neo-colonialism, cheap knock-off's, trade imbalance, human rights, Dafur...Their report of the visit started with the remark "who is in town..." and I am meant to take them seriously. They did though take some timeless pics of the First Lady in some awkward situation on the State House balcony.

Julie Gichuru also wasted a once in a lifetime chance to ask Obama some hard hitting questions about his future political relationship with Kenya like why is he in Kenya, apart from visiting his family, when he clearly says that he represents his state Illinois interests...she gets soft on controversial or charismatic figures.

Robert Nagila keeps on bobbing his head while speaking. Sometimes I think that our future presenters are last years winners of the Poem & Insha category in the School Music Festival.

Oh yes and why do all reporters pause while saying the last caption of their report, stressing their location right down to the street corner/ meter?

KBC is the worst Parrot in this category and Citizen TV... just cannot shake that Papa Shirandula look no matter how much they re-launch themselves... even the matter of objectivity is a no no. K24 TV is too casual for my taste. All TV stations stretch the 9 o'clock news unnecessarily long (1 hour! Airtime must be cheap in Kenya!) so that some times the sport presenters have to rush and read fast to keep time!?.

KTN has the best editors but ever since they were raided they have become sooooo overly critical of the government that they lost their objectivity and cut their reports to suite their view. For example the recent Nairobi mayoral election was painted by KTN to be a huge PNU rigging scheme just like the election. Remember that KTN (stepping into a mine field here) had made everyone believe that Odinga had won the presidential election and Kibaki had rigged himself in through the ECK. To prove my point, every 2007 election result sceptic quotes KTN as their authority! By the way, the EU final report on the elections is still pending though it was due in February...I am not surprised since the EU was very vocal to support Odinga without checking their facts...now they will have to cook their books somehow considering that most of their observers were mostly in the national parks. At least NTV tried to remain objective during the chaos but lost it when the media ban was imposed. Anyway Odinga has now got what he always wanted but broke the back of our Judiciary system along the way which he incidentally so trusted to try and stop the Safaricom IPO just before the elections but not to settle the election dispute. I digress.

The reason I am seriously condemning our Pressmen is that I cannot really say that they are objective / research in depth all articles and reports that they present at all. I do not see any form of professionalism in them. They are not critical enough to focus on development issues or uncover government scams. They are also very Nairobi centric in their reporting. I really miss WDR 5 in Germany a radio station dedicated to news & documentaries or Phoenix the current affairs channel which covers parliamentary debates, shows news conferences and rallies UNCUT and in full length. I also miss The Weekly Review as it was before 1984. No wonder in Kenya news has become Newsshot / Bullseye and in the print media Nairobi Star / Metro "newspapers".

I still have more rants about the press and have just started.