The Ethics of Covering Free and Fair Elections

In covering the ongoing election campaigns for this year's polls expected to take place December, journalists are under a sharp public microscope which will critically examine their professional competence in ethical issues involving independence, freedom of the press, impartiality , fair play, decency , accuracy and responsibility. These are by no means the only ethical principles in the Kenyan code but they are the backbone issues which arguably were the first to be considered by the first authors of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1922. Since then these seven ethical principles have been used by many countries all other the word to shape up their own code.In my view if Kenyan journalists can just observe these original ethical principles while covering the 2007 elections they will be professional enough to claim to be upright.

According to one great editor, C.P. Scott , comment is free but facts are sacred and that is the one aspect of Kenyan journalism where the ethical importance of Impartiality will be put to test during the coverage of the current elections .These famous words by Scott are at times forgotten by Kenyan journalists when they ignore the vital question of separation of news from comment , or the religious avoidance of what in current usage is termed tendentiousness. Americans simply call it editorializing. Though Scott’s words have been classic, they tend to lose much of their force if divorced, as they commonly are , from their context.

What C.P.Scott said was :“The newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly , and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news .At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted .Neither in what it gives nor in what it does not give , nor in the mode of presentation , must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free , facts are sacred. Propaganda , so called , by this means is hateful. The voice of opponents no less than of friends has a right to be heard. Comment is also justly subject to a self imposed restraint. It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair.” According to yet another journalism scholar ,Wilson Harris, the highest canons of journalism could find no better definition than that.[1]

Yet even Harris admits that this is not quite all the story. He says the question how far it is the function of the Press to give the public what the public wants is still worth asking . Here , of course, the element must be considered. It is convenient to speak generally of the Press , but what is meant in fact is a number of individual newspapers , each of them intent on increasing its circulation at the expense of the others . In the current election campaign the odds are all in the paper that gives its readers what its readers want , as against a rival who gives them what it thinks they ought to have .

Despite the journalistic rules of impartiality , Kenyan readers have a special liking for editorialized presentation of news the way The People used to do when covering the 1997 elections .Note the following intro. of its front page lead at that time for example :

The writing is on the wall. It is either reforms
or anarchy. That is the loud and clear message
that the Kenyans have been beaming to President
Moi for the last couple of weeks , but like the
mean-spirited and stone -hearted Pharaoh of
ancient Egypt , he is unwilling to let the people
go .It is the biggest challenge he has so far faced.[2]

Impartiality has never prevented modern journalists from presenting their stories in an interpretative manner provided their interpretations are based on facts .Interpretative journalism becomes even more forceful when it is based on investigative powers .Most of the alternative newspapers in Kenya tend to ignore the ethical rule of impartiality; but their editorialized presentation of news is only popular among readers because it is based on well researched stories which are interpreted to the readers in a slanted manner to suit the convenience of the parties supported by the editors. Very often this crusading , and often biased , presentation of stories has landed a number of newspapers in very serious legal problems some of which seem to be more political than legal .

The Partisan Press

Many of the newspapers and magazines in Kenya’s alternative Press are naturally partisans ;but that should be no excuse for their blatant twisting of news to an extent that opinion becomes more prominent than facts. Obviously journalists anywhere in the world have plenty of opinion. But the profession is based on the idea that they can keep those opinions out of their stories .Very often journalists in the alternative Press and at times even those in the mainstream Press do less than a perfect job of it . Readers often see personal feelings intruding into their so-called hard news stories.

During the 1997 election The People was ordered by courts to pay Shs 10,000 to Joshua Kulei for alleging he was involved in corrupt practices with a Nairobi-based Asian businessmen.
If the alternative Press in Kenya appears to be rather weak on the ethical requirements of impartiality they are even weaker on Fair Play issue . Hardly ever are readers of the alternative publications, which make scathing attacks against almost all the political leaders in Kenya without giving them an opportunity to reply. Yet yet professional ethics demand the voice of the condemned leaders should also be heard. Ethically any accusation made by a newspaper outside a court of law should be balanced by opinions of those being accused.

The media in Kenya these days are full of anti Kibaki government stories published obviously with a view of making it extremely difficult to come back to power after the elections . Very often the accusations are legitimate since the papers publishing them are only playing their watchdog role of the Fourth Estate .But the manner in which the stories are presented to the people is unprofessional as it fails to observe the important ethical requirement of fair play. Stories accusing the government of all manner of things would sound more authentic if the accusations were balanced by comments of the accused, even if that comment was simply saying “no comment !”

It is easy for journalists in Kenya to be biased because they rub shoulders more often with opinionated politicians .It is also possible many of them don’t even know that being publicly biased is being unprofessional. The thrill of chasing an expose on a major corrupt practice within the Government could easily blind them to the fact that as professionals they must always make an attempt to see the their side of the coin.

Howard Kurtz ,the Press critic of the Washington Post says journalists’ real bias is bad news bias .They love conflict ,emotion ,charges and counter charges .A reporter who spends months chasing allegations of wrong doing sometimes finds his vision clouded by the thrill of the chase . One who spends too much time hanging out with cops and prosecutors may wind up thinking the same way , sometimes overlooking reckless conduct by his law enforcement buddies. A city council man who keeps feeding a reporter inside dope is less likely to become the object of harsh scrutiny .But that tendencies have more to do with mind-set than ideology.[3]

During the various times when our political leaders have pretended to be interested in working together to shape up a constitution that is acceptable to all Kenyans through dialogue the majority of Kenyan journalists were in favour of a meaningful dialogue. Many of them, including yours truly, said so publicly and in their columns .Much of their reporting on the issue of dialogue was expected to be biased either in content , tone , choice of language or prominence of play. This kind of bias was noticeable to any keen eye. It was natural therefore that when pro-dialogue groups held huge demonstrations throughout the capital city and other major towns of Kenya on July 7 ,1997, all the papers gave the event front page treatment it deserved as a major event. The point I want to make here in favour of Kenyan journalists is that despite the known latent bias among journalists favouring the Opposition stance of dialogue , no journalist took part in the demonstration as active participants.

This Kenyan episode contrasted sharply with another demonstration in the Spring of 1989, when 300,000 people marched in Washington for abortion rights .The demonstration turned into a journalists’ watershed because the marchers included a number of reporters and editors from New York Times , Washington Post, and other media organizations.[4]

According to Kurtz one of the demonstrators was Linda Greenhouse who covered the Supreme Court for the Times .Though she had had permission from her boss , Howell Raines , before taking part in the demonstration ,Greenhouse was later reprimanded for “violating New York Times policy” . Fairly or unfairly , those who join the news business give up certain rights . Matters that are routine for most citizens , such as signing petitions or contributing to political candidates , ought to be out of bounds for members of the Press. We ought to give ourselves the same standards to which we so rightly hold public officials , though no one should pretend that we are opinion-free .It is the parading of such opinion publicly that poses the danger of leading us into slippery professional slope.

Freelancers’ exposes

In Kenya survival of both the alternative and the mainstream media appears to depend heavily on exposes obtained from freelancers who are not necessarily reliable news gathers .Many are the times as the Managing Editor of the Daily Nation when the use of stories from such reporters landed me in courts facing serious libel lawsuits. Yet when all is said and done, it is natural for any truly independent newspaper , radio or television station to have a professionally healthy hunger for exposes . All I am suggesting is that that hunger must always be nurtured by the careful guard against reporters’ temptation to lie. This temptation intensifies and grows into an irresistible urge to mislead readers, viewers and listeners in favour of certain political leaders during election campaign time such us we are going through now. Pictures of favoured leaders appear on front pages of all newspapers in an almost daily basis. Sometimes these campaigns to boost the images of selected leaders become too obvious and one wonders whether they are being caused by bribery.

A close examination of Kenyan Press - both mainstream and the alternative - reveals that untruth can and does slip through editors’ fingers making it difficult to erect an airtight defense against lying reporters .Hence the need to check , and check all the facts before you put pen on paper. I knew of a news editor at Florida’s St. Petersburg Times who had a big poster above his head for all his reporters to see which said : “If your mother says she loves you check it out !”

Both the alternative and the mainstream Press in Kenya have little problem with Decency which is an important pillar of journalistic ethics . Be that as it may I will not be surprised at all when stories of private lives of powerful political candidates threatening to oust the incumbents are not published during this election campaign. The stories may go into details painting the prurient picture of the secret behaviours of some unfortunate political leaders. It has happened before in the Western world.

Practitioners and proprietors in the Western world are unable to agree on how to curb encroaching tendencies to use pornography as circulation boosters in down- market newspapers . The International Press Institute has become a stage for debate between those opposed to pornography and those backing it as a form of journalism. The latest worrying pornographic threat to communication has hit the Internet forcing Germany to make attempts to tame the Web. Writing about the “Internet Trials” in the Time magazine of July 14 , 1997 , Jordan Bonfate says the question of how to police the borderless realm of Internet has baffled jurists and legislators ever since the World Wide Web started its wild expansion in early 1990s.But regulation happy Germany , he says , was one of the first countries to try to patrol this twilight zone of information and entertainment , zealously extending existing criminal statutes to the Internet and sending in the cyber-sheriffs to go after the likes of Angela Marquardt and Felix Somm, both accused of providing access to home pages on the Web with illicit content. More obvious still , the Bundestag (then) passed Europe’s first comprehensive national Internet law.(Bonfate)

The new legislation defines responsibility for pornography and other potentially objectionable material appearing on computer screens , prescribes the rules of protecting the confidentiality of personal data and grants the world’s first licenses for “digital signatures”, a supposedly foolproof method of protecting commercial transactions on the Internet.[5]

Though the Internet has already entered the homes of the affluent in Kenya it has yet to pose a national crisis as a means to corrupt the youth of this country. The issue of decency on newspaper pages can be serious as there is a tendency on the part of at least one national newspaper to go down-market for circulation purposes. Given the eagerness noticeable among the young professionals enthusiastic to become proprietors of their own publications, I believe it will not take long before Kenya witnesses the birth of magazine specializing in prurient interests.

Admirable Journalism

Journalism in Kenya is among the most admirable on the continent of Africa but among its biggest problems facing it is how it could deal with inaccurate information .Accuracy has become a major professional concern among journalists all over the world ; but in Kenya it is a particularly serious problem because the country appear to be in short supply of reliable news sources even among official circles. The problem becomes more serious during the coverage of elections and the current elections are no exception. Yet a lot of what is published in Kenyan newspapers , like it is in the rest of the world, is second-hand information. Journalism scholar ,Curtis D. MacDougall , admits that most news gathered by reporters is second-hand but warns journalists to remember that news sources unquestionably are responsible for as many if not more news story errors than reporters. He even suggests that mistakes made by those giving out news may be intentional .[6]

The reporters’ weapons against inaccuracy ,as a result of news sources’ inability or unwillingness to give reliable information ,are verification and honesty of purpose. If a reporter approaches the task of both reporting and writing his story without prejudice ,whatever error he does make at least will be unintentional .Fairness and caution both require that ,when two persons interviewed differ greatly as to the truth , the statement of both should be included is the news story, .To achieve this objective , newspapers go to extremes of which the general public hardly dreams .The sentence saying that Mr. Smith could not be reached for a statement may have been added to a story many hours after futile efforts to attain either accuracy of fairness or both. (MacDougall)

The trouble with the Kenyan journalists trying to reach accuracy is that they are often dealing with people capable of making public statements and totally denying ever making them when they are in political or legal hot soup. Ten years ago the Ford Asili Chairman Kenneth Matiba told journalists he had resigned his Kaharu Parliamentary seat and promised to communicate his resignation to the Speaker of the National Assembly the next day[7].

But the next day Matiba disowned the story scapegoating the journalists who had written it. More than anywhere else in the world reporters in Kenya have to be extra careful because they are not only dealing with inaccurate , misleading and sometimes outright lying sources of information but with extremely ruthless laws that treat those who publish untruths very cruelly . The only answer for the true professionals is to be truly responsible journalists ready to publish the truth and be damned for it. Which brings me to the next most important pillar of journalistic ethics - Responsibility.

Whenever some of African despotic leaders talk about “responsible” journalism or Press they mean the journalism and Press they have in their pockets and therefore in their total control.

Misused Press

Newspapers , magazines radio and television stations in Africa have been used or misused to perpetuate the misrule of dictatorship ever since colonial powers gave way to African authoritarianism. And whenever there is a coup that replaces one dictator with another the first thing the rebellious soldiers go for is a radio station. African journalists have a much harder responsibility of upholding journalistic principles at the risk of not only being labeled traitors by the dictators but endangering their lives in so doing. The argument about whether journalists in this country are Kenyans or professionals first has been advanced by those in power when they appeal to practitioners to suppress important news in the name of patriotism .

In my opinion , journalists are more patriotic when they are guided by the truth and when they draw demarcation lines between right and wrong .Obviously for journalists to do this most effectively they must understand and master the functions of their profession. Holmgren and Norton tell us the way in which the individuals uses the media give us clues as to the functions of the media in society as a whole .[8]

If we consider the time when people spend on media ,we might conclude that most Kenyans have far more respect for news and information than for entertainment. Holmgren and Norton say people need a continuous survey of our environment, whether immediate or distant. They become uneasy if they don’t receive a stream of information ,however uneven ,about changes taking place on the horizon. More simply , this involves the reporting of news or presentation of information about our world and its people. We might call this watcher function of media ,and it is performed especially well by newspapers ,television ,radio and newsmagazines.( Holmgren and Norton ).

The two scholars also say the other functions of the media is that of providing us with a forum , a running series of arguments among rival views and personalities enabling people to reach a consensus about issues facing society. This is what Kenyan journalists shuld do when covering the current election campaigns.

The two scholars also explain other roles such as the teacher role of the media .Examined carefully it becomes easy to see that the real bosses of the professional journalists are the people rather than the government or media owners .Responsibility to a professional journalist should be total dedication to serve humanity by safeguarding freedoms of conscience , movement , assembly and association and through that process uphold freedom of expression .This calls for total professional commitment which many believe can only be achieved by devoted dadication to journalistic ethics upheld by independence ,freedom of the Press, impartiality, fair play, decency , accuracy and responsibility as discussed above.

A close look at how journalists perform their duty when covering the election campaigns in Kenya would reveal many violations which are not only confined to the alternative Press but sadly, the mainstream media as well. Kurtz reveals a whole range of ethical problems encountered by a media reporters all over the world and his revelation are startling. He lists pitfalls such as conflicts of interest , freebies , junkets , intellectual theft , deception , carelessness , kowtowing to advertisers , use of dubious evidence and outright bias. It is striking how often we in the news business fail to live up to the high minded standards that we prescribe for others .
















[1] Harris ,Wilson ,The Daily Press, Cambridge at the University Press,1949)
[2] “Reforms : Moi’s Biggest Test” in The People of July 11-17,1997 ( N0.228)
[3] Kurtz , Howard , Media Circus , Times Book Random House , New York , (1993.)
[4] Ibid.
[5] “The Internet Game” in Time Magazine Vol.150 No.2 page 28 ( July 14,1997)
[6] MacDougall ,Curtis Interpretative Reporting The Macmillan Company , New York. (1968)
[7] “Matiba Resigns” in East African Standard of May 31st 1997 ,front page (No.25826)
[8] Holmgren ,Rod and Norton, William , “A Look at Modern Media” in The Mass Media Book Prentice-Hall,Inc. Cliff, New Jersey, (1971).