The media as the fourth estate is charged with the duty of being the watchdog to the society exposing and highlighting whenever the government of the day slides.
Despite glaring discrepancies in the highly contested last general elections the media was falsified for taking a partisan position in their reporting by opting to ignore the plight of one side of the political divide,for the the first time ever in history an electoral body in this case IEBC congratulated the media for acting “professionally”
This was happening after the media a whole battery of about 200+ journalists failed to ask any question despite the differences in the readings from the commissioners and the results board displaying figures.
That aside,ICC cases reporting is falling victim of the bias and impunity that has become of Kenyan media. In news writing for starters there is a factor known as news angle,this is simply the vector journalist opts for the story to
Instance by witnesses withdrawing and recanting their testimonies,the media opts to deem all the vectors and take the angle of this being a blow to the prosecutor,what about the victims? According to the Kenyan media the victim doesn’t suffer a blow.
One journalist Willis Raburu is currently under fire for exposing the real identity of a protected witness 536 This is the highest order of impunity exhibited by a public figure whom the public instills trust in. By revealing the identity of a witness who the court tried to disguise in all manners from the public is bridging of the law.
But the saddest part of the story that despite the evidence of screenshots,the journalist denied the claims.
By revealing the identities of the witness does it bother one of the consequences it would have on the victim and their families back home.
The prosecution has more than once expressed concerns over witnesses bribery,intimidation and in some cases execution. All these factors should be put in before revealing the identities of a witness like Raburu did.
While Raburu was exposing the witness,KTN was on the other hand airing another bomb they tracked down the parents of a purported
witness at the ICC,interview them and then play it on national TV.
Not even putting into consideration the dangers of the couple crying out being put into. Also by airing the story KTN was subverting the justice system going by the fact that the said guy is a witness protected by law,they were propelling the coercion and intimidation to the witness to recant the testimony against Uhuru Kenyatta.
By KTN airing that story they know the said witness was watching so a warning shot was being sent for recantation.
Such cleverly packaged witnesses intimidation antics contributes to the growing numbers of witnesses withdrawing in fear for their lives and families.
Daily Nation also lands on the chopping board,on Tuesday during the testimony of witness 536 the national newspaper provider deliberately ignored to highlight the responses of the witness in their tweets being broadcasted to millions,instead they picked on a clearly bias angle.
They simply tweeted the questions sent to the witness by the prosecutor while ignoring to update her responses. This could pass any one for being a normal update but an in depth look reveals hidden agenda of hiding the facts being given out by the witness to the public.
On noticing the trend,Nairobi Exposed sent a tweet to the Daily Nation twitter handle exposing their dirty tactics and ironically they quickly deleted all the tweets before we could take the screenshots. However,you can see the screenshot of the tweet we sent at the end of this post.
With such open and glaring facts the Kenyan media doesn’t escape falsification on the handling of this sensitive matter and opts to dance to the “masters” tunes and abandoning their mandate to the public and crushing their trust.
Nairobi Exposed shall henceforth be the media watchdog to put them back on where they belong.
In your opinion what’s your take on this article and is the media handling the ICC case as it should be?
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