Mainstream media in the wilderness as people go for 'microwave' news

Something positive is happening in Kenya, not mandated by the government or other official entities but because people desire to do so. People are thinking individually or in groups and feel good and fulfilled. They are in universities organising random lectures or graduate discussion groups on specific areas of interest or outside the university setting focusing on particular lines.

A group of free thinkers, initiated by Fred Kang’ethe Iraki, discuss pertinent challenges of the day because the challenges are there after which some ‘remember Jesus’ and his last instructions.

The media have received attention. The media are in a geopolitical and ideological wilderness. They are in anguish watching their previous confidence as custodians of public good erode. Having lost dominance to new players, digital/internet, who ignore set rules of operational decorum, their ability to check governance in specific places diminishes. They, however, remain relevant and will weather the current onslaught on their being because their essence remains relevant to changing society.

At least one former newspaper editor, Mr Joe Mbuthia, exudes confidence that all is not lost. He is in a group of people calling themselves ‘philosophers’, who meet to stimulate minds by exploring emerging or bothersome phenomena for no reason other than the fact that the phenomenon exists.

Ideally, the press is there to inform, educate, and entertain the audience the best way it knows how, which in turn depends on certain realities.

First is the interest of the creator of a given media house, the why question rather than the how or the what. Some business tycoons open media companies to destroy rivals. In 1902, for instance, Alibhai Jeevanjee founded The African Standard to destroy a competitor who had maligned him; he thereafter sold the paper to the settlers. Others have missionary zeal to dictate policy and shape public thinking.

My money

Henry Luce used his TIME magazine to turn the Americans against Mao’s China. There also are ideologues whose competing press can manufacture crises and even wars. Others do things as hobbies because they have money. Ted Turner, for instance, mounted a money losing 24 hours CNN news operation because, he declared, “it’s my money”. Others read the geopolitical mood and jump at the opportunity, like the Aga Khan on the eve of Kenya’s independence; he succeeded in establishing a media presence in East Africa.

Whatever the reason for creating media houses, symbiosis develops between government and media, similar to the symbiosis between religions and state as presumed custodians of state interests. Religions and the press, therefore, are organs of governance, despite occasional disagreements on how to deal with certain challenges. Whether the press, which Edmund Burke baptised the Fourth Estate, is equal to others is relative to the country in question. Subsequently, press operators are expected to be aware of or to be sensitive to three environments that affect them.

These are first the readers whom it claims to inform, educate, and entertain. Second are the advertisers who pay the bills and make profits for the press. Third is the government in any given place as the regulating authority. To run counter to all the three environments is to lose focus and the purpose of being. It is, however, possible for the press to be sensitive to all the three environments and still lose to unexpected new factors that force changes.

The latest challenge, the subject of Mbuthia’s concern, is the digital/internet threat to regular journalism. With anyone holding a smartphone playing reporter, people refuse to ‘read’, demand ‘microwave’ news, and ignore journalistic rules that stress accuracy.

This decline in the reading culture can probably be traced to a deteriorating educational system that tends to numb the mind instead of pricking curiosity. When people refuse to read, the press is in trouble because it will have few to educate, inform, or entertain. Since the press has survived previous challenges by adapting, he believes, it will survive the digital challenge.