By Prof Kithure Kindiki
The freedom of the media is the cornerstone of credible democracy around the World, and thus sets the foundation for human rights and social justice.
Today, I wish to celebrate all our countrymen and women who make every sacrifice to keep us in the know, sometimes in very difficult circumstances. Indeed, this sacrifice goes beyond our frontiers: special thanks to everyone out there doing this incredible media work in any part of the globe.
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However, the media freedom we celebrate today is badly threatened by a couple of things: Among them, one; serious rise of fake news, deliberate disinformation, and clear hate speech. Today, you are more likely to land onto made up stories – largely on social media and online platforms as opposed to truthful information as was before. This threat attacks the crust of press freedom by turning upside down the media currency thus leaving us with a thin line between facts and fiction, destroys science and promotes conspiracy and negative imagination.
This may seem easy, but we cannot sweep it under the carpet. For us in the security sector, this represents a threat to our general security and therefore we take it very seriously. I call upon every actor in the media sector to help by raising the red flag when they come across such disinformation in order to secure our people from the dangers posed by fake news.
Two, the media has faced increased disruption from the effects of Covid-19 which ravaged global economies and led to loss of lives and livelihoods. Journalists from across the width and breadth of our Republic lost their jobs, with the media companies downsizing their human capital and even slashing the earnings of our friends in the media sector. Most of these media companies are yet to reinstate the contractual obligations that existed before the Covid pandemic.
Allow me today, to speak for and on behalf of the thousands of journalists on our planet who speak about our issues daily but lack even basic human provisions because of poor pay and uncaring media sector actors who find this normal. Just as was the message the other day on International Labour Day, it is pretentious of us to expect an independent media and unbiased information from reporters when journalists go for months without pay and others cannot sustain themselves because the pay is too little. Today is my day to call for a review of the payment terms of journalists in our country – ensuring they are given some remuneration commensurate with their day’s work and today’s cost of living. There must be an EQUAL pay for an EQUAL day.
To my fellow citizens, let us not abandon the media – specifically the journalists. Let us talk for them, even as they talk on our behalf. If we don’t do this, nobody will. The financial independence of an individual journalist is equal to the overall independence of the media and thus media freedom that we are celebrating today.
Three, I must speak to the individual safety of our reporters, which has also been under threat. We continue to promote this by embedding the media in all our activities, including security operations because we firmly believe in an open society and the media represents this openness in our democracy. We will continue protecting journalists to do their job – online and offline and punish those who threaten the safety of reporters in their line of work.
However, sometimes it gets hard to identify the real journalists from criminals, which brings the question of freedom and safety off balance. Across the country, we have all manner of people carrying cameras, a pen and a notebook and sometimes armed with fake badges trying to penetrate the media space for their own reasons. Sometimes, this has led to cases of extortion as reported in some of our police stations. This must STOP. The media through self-regulation and accreditation by relevant agencies including the Media Council of Kenya must safeguard this space by ensuring the upsurge in numbers of people masquerading as journalists – commonly called quacks is stemmed.
To this end, our security agencies will work with the media players to help protect the freedom and integrity of the media in our country.
Lastly, we will work with all media players to ensure the current media space is not only protected but also expanded systematically in order to eliminate opaqueness in the security sector that more often than not leads to misinformation and speculation. In the coming days and weeks, I will be inviting the Media Owners, the Editors Guild, the Kenya Union of Journalists, the Correspondents Association, the Media Council of Kenya, Crime Reporters and other players in the media industry to a thematic dialogue – “Security and the Media Dialogue” to ensure we talk with each other and move conversations about media freedom in our sector to action.
Meanwhile, to all journalists in our country and the globe; stand up for the truth, and the truth will set us FREE. Happy World Press Freedom Day!
The writer is the internal Cabinet Secretary