The Media Council of Kenya to withdraw a directive requiring all media houses to register.
Any proposals to oversight or deregister independent media associations must be approached with caution not to assume control over the registration, governance and operational structures of media enterprises, the Kenya Editors Guild said on Tuesday.
It called on the Media Council of Kenya Special Committee on Review of Media Associations to suspend the said registration deadline until the committee addresses all the underlying issues.
The guild says it has no objection to registering with the Media Council, on the principle that it also has the right to make a register of its own partner-organisations.
“We humbly ask MCK to, as a sign of good faith, withdraw the directive on the registration deadline pending completion of the Committee report and hopeful resolution of issues raised that came with the risk of dividing the media sector,” it said in a submission to MCK Special Committee on Review of Media Associations.
The submission is signed by guild president Churchill Otieno and Macharia Gaitho who chairs Ethics & Media Freedom Committee.
This demand for filling of registration forms is clearly premature, coming ahead of the Committee report and recommendations. We will, therefore, wait for the Committee report before returning the registration forms
The guild expects the committee to provide assurances that registration is purely for the compilation of an in-house list of partners, and is not in furtherance of requests from other government agencies.
It notes that when the committee was formulated, there were fears that it was established as a mechanism to curtail the organisation's freedom to operate, probably with a pre-determined outcome.
The wording of the announcement, the guild said, indicated that some media organisations needed to be brought under control with no indication where those complaints were coming from.
In the notice, the MCK said media organisations seeking registration with the Registrar of Societies or the NGO Coordinating Bureau were required to present a ‘Letter of No Objection’ from the Council. In turn, the Council had to guarantee that applicants would operate within the law and would also serve the media sector effectively.
There was however no reference to any provision of the Media Council Act or any other law appointing the MCK as a clearing house for registration of media organisations.
“We want the committee to explain clearly the purpose of registration, and the penalties/consequences on non-registration, make it clear that media associations are independent in their own right and not junior stakeholders to the Media Council,” the submission states.
The guild said the committee should further recognise that freedom of association, which includes the right to form media and any other associations and manage them within their own rules and regulations, is an entrenched constitutional right.
It said the committee must clarify that the MCK does not intend to presume the role of a clearing house or vetting body in regard to independent media associations and their engagements with third parties, including support agencies and national and international organisations.
