Today is World Press Freedom Day, a day men and women who are in love with their pens, notebooks, cameras and microphones reflect on their work and environment and what they go through to feed society with refreshing information.
Kenya has undoubtedly positioned itself at the top spot as the country in Africa with well-developed media, but its ranking in World Press Freedom Index has not been impressive at all.
Perhaps it is high time we started asking ourselves some tough questions such as why some countries with worse cases of violation of the rights of journalists ranked ahead of us? While we celebrate some of the positive developments, we cannot turn a blind eye to challenges that can be nipped in the bud to protect the gains we have made.
All duty bearers in the industry should be worried and pull out all the stops to safeguard the gains Kenyan media has registered for years, support growth and play in the big league with countries were press freedom is flourishing.
Over the past two years, a trend has been developing where heavy presence of the government is seen in media regulation in violation of the Constitution, which guarantees media freedom. While government support for media is welcome, it must keep off editorial space as we transition to self-regulation. We cannot remain in co-regulation forever.
There has been some overreach by some state agencies keen on tightening their grips on the media to serve some interests that are not for the common good of society.
This is dangerous for our growing democracy, which requires the media to not only inform but play the critical role of watchdog. This is more critical given that the country has had no opposition since the March 9, 2018, handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
The Covid-19 pandemic was a wake-up call on the media, showing that it is built of quicksand and can sink anytime when minimum force is applied. The redundancies and salary cuts that journalists and media workers were subjected to were demonstrations that the industry is not stable, and requires some reflections on how to shield it from such shocks in future.
It was against this backdrop that industry stakeholders stopped reading books of lamentation, converged in Maanzoni last year and released a six-point agenda called the Maanzoni Declaration to guide the industry while seeking solutions to the challenges it is facing.
The key tenets of the Maanzoni Declaration are media sustainability, media support, policy and legal reforms, gender inclusion, safety of and welfare of journalists. If all duty bearers can occupy themselves with these issues, the industry will certainly repulse the challenges that lie ahead. If we can create time and resources to focus on these issues instead of annual rituals in newsrooms where journalists are sent to inflation, then we will be talking.
We head to the August 9 election with a media that is determined to turn the tides against challenges that bedevilled it in the past two elections, where performance was found to be below par during post-election analysis.
All stakeholders have a duty to build confidence among the consumers of media products by working jointly on projects that require huge resources to deliver news to readers, listeners and viewers, instead of competing. All consumers of news want is credible and verifiable information. If the media does not get it right, the situation will be worse in future due to technological changes that have made the delivery of news more convenient.
Lastly, even as we prepare journalists and the industry ahead of the election, let us not forget to ensure that the environment is safe and their pockets are not empty. We cannot expect journalists and their support staff to work when some have not been adequately remunerated.
Media, like any other business, should take the welfare of their staff seriously to motivate them. The biggest threat to press freedom is poor terms and conditions of service.
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