On March 7, the Star carried an exclusive interview with Jonathan Moi as its front page lead story. Moi was quoted as denying claims in an article by John Ward in the Nairobi Law Monthly that he was responsible for the murder of Ward’s daughter 24 years ago.Hot story, for sure. But not as exclusive as the Star might have liked, since two reporters who knew about the piece had mentioned it on their Facebook pages the night before. When St...

On February 2, the Star’s front-page story reported that, according to a Strategic Research poll taken in late January, Raila was leading Uhuru by 13 points. Five days later, the Star’s front-page story reported that, according to an Ipsos-Synovate poll taken at almost the same time, Raila was leading Uhuru by only seven points.After the second story ran, one reader asked on the Star website, “If sampling is properly done, an...

On January 12, the Star carried a page 2 story about a Kenyan supposedly being stoned to death by al Shabaab members in Somalia. As I learned by mid-morning from alert reader Vincent Chepkwony, the account and accompanying photos—supplied by the Kenyan military’s twitterer-in-chief, Major Emmanuel Chirchir—were of a 2009 event that had nothing to do with either Kenya or al Shabaab. The misinformation from Chirchir (also repor...

On several occasions over the past few months, I’ve received only one or two complaints about a particular story or practice of the Star—not enough, in my view, to merit a whole column. But the complaints have stuck in my mind because of the issues they raise, and as the year comes to a close I’d like to briefly discuss three of them.The first involves a Star cartoon. Political cartoons have a special power to cause outrage, ...