The Code says when money is paid for information, serious questions can be raised about the credibility of that information and the motive of the buyer and seller. Therefore, in practice, journalists should avoid paying for information unless public interest is involved. In the same context, journalists should not receive any money as incentive to publish any information.
Though the practice is yet to be the order of the day scoops in many Western countries can be extremely expensive. In his popular book The Insider, Piers Morgan, the former Editor of the Daily Mirror describes a typical incident of paying for news. He says on Wednesday 17, November 1999, he received a call from a Max Clifford saying that he had a “dynamite” meaning very hot news.. Morgan explains that the dynamite was in fact a one fact story on Cherie Blair and wanted an equally dynamite cheque for it. Morgan listened to the fact and instantly agreed a fee with Max “not massively far from 50,000 British pounds. That is more than five million Kenyan shillings. Sand what was the scoop? Simply the fact that Cherie was pregnant at 45! And what was the justification for spending so much money just to be the first with the news about Prime Minister’s wife. According to Morgan, this was “journalism at its best!”
The debate about whether or not to pay for exclusives has been going on in journalism schools for a very long time. Many of them condemn the practice yet highly qualified editors keep their jobs by paying paroled criminals and self-confessed drug addicts large sums of money in order to extract from them private information about their weird lives. A large number of magazines in the Western world exist by publications of such exclusives.
The moral dilemma involved in the exercise has split practitioners down the middle. For some the ex convicts given the money by journalists have a story to tell and often they are the only people with the details of the story. According to the Kenyan Code if the story is of great significance to the “public interest” then it would be well and good to pay for it. There are scholars who believe paying for a dirty story makes the outcome after publication equally dirty as in the final analysis it makes criminals benefit from the crime.
Another name for the practice of paying for news is “checkbook journalism” which is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary of English language as journalism that involves the payment of money to an informant for the right to publish or broadcast news story. Discussing the controversial subject in his column Media Mix in the 26th June 2005 issue of the USA Today, Peter Johnson says the most well versed magazines in American checkbook journalism are People, US Weekly and Star which pay big money to photographers for exclusive photos of stars and their weddings, with their newborns, canoodling or doing anything that will pretty much guarantee newsstand sales.
Among the most popular celebrity magazines in the UK is OK! which, according to Johnson, added a new dimension to the celebrity journalism in 2005 when it launched its US version and promised to pay stars directly for exclusive access to their homes, lives and families. Inevitably checkbook journalism always fascinates journalism scholars when they debate the line between hard news and entertainment which touches on the private lives of celebrities and ex convicts. That line, they argue, is fading very fast even here in Kenya. In March 2006 for example, Kenyan journalists fed readers, viewers and listeners with a lot of hogwash about Armenian “crooks” who came to the country in a mysterious manner and established business deals with a young lady who happens to be the daughter of the ruling Narc party activist.
Paradoxically, that particular story was given a total news blackout by the international journalists based in Nairobi who only a couple of days before were splashing the Kenyan hottest story of the time when hooded policemen invaded The Standard editorial offices and its printing plant. Reason? The Armenian story was too petty and came close to what celebrity magazines in the Western world would spend millions to get exclusively. The kind of interest readers, viewers and listeners in Kenya showed as they followed revelations after revelations about Armenian “mercenaries” clearly indicated that Kenya was heading towards sensational journalism which is very often kept alive by checkbooks.
It is a dangerous trend that could easily anger the public if it discovered the true motive of the so-called Armenian exposés. The danger of checkbook journalism involving celebrities in that the publicity sensitive ones insist on approving copy and layouts even after accepting money from media houses. OK! Openly admits that it gives stars both picture and text approval which is a line ethically upright editors never cross, according to Johnson. When OK! was launched in the US the magazine’s CEO Christian…….? Said: “(Instead of checkbook journalism) the term we use is relationship journalism. We pay the celebrities directly because we prefer to get the true story as opposed to paying some waiter in a restaurant who overheard something a celebrity said,” Martha Nelson, Managing Editor of People acknowledges that she has paid for exclusives but she adds, “People has never, and will never, abandon editorial control of stories. We will never let subjects review a story, or approve the layouts, or do anything that would limit our editorial integrity.”
According to Sidney Goldberg, a New York media consultant who is also a senior vice president of United Media for Syndication the phrase “paying for news” reeks of sleaze and unethical behaviour. “The stench (makes) journalists in newspapers, TV studios, and the halls of academe, to hold their noses. How dare the media pay someone for information?” If you have a job with the media, he argues, it is perfectly honorable to be paid a salary or a fee. If you don’t and someone within the media pays you for your information then both the payer and the payee are violating the journalistic code of never paying for information. Writing for the website TCS (Tech Central Station) he brings up an interesting angle of the payee receiving money as a contributor.
This of course, he says, is only possible if the payee has the skills to organize his information into an article. One need not be a clairvoyant to predict that Kenya’s checkbook journalism, now in its infancy, will soon blossom into full maturity when tabloid journalism does the same. If and when journalism in Kenya is professionalized – and the swelling numbers of trained professionals are increasingly demanding this – the quacks now in newsrooms will soon be marginalized. That is when most of them will change from journalists into spies who will sell information to the professionals.
The bottom line in all this argues Goldberg, is that the media wants its product—news and features for free. But he add : “ an ‘informer’ who wants to be paid for his information by a ( reluctant) journalist can turn around and sell the information to a book firm – with a ghost writer if need be -- and be within the rule. The book can get great reviews and no reviewer will revile the author and/or ghost for getting paid for it by the publisher.”
The current battle for “exclusives” has become more and more suspicious among the mainstream media to such an extent that scoops have now been accepted as the yardstick of measuring professionalism among journalists in Kenya. It is obvious that within a very short time a proper celebrity magazine will be born in Kenya and it may even follow the OK! path of buying news from the subjects. The danger in doing so is obvious. The celebrities will only reveal the positive aspects of their lives and not the newsworthy story which obviously is what the people are interested in.
When celebrities make news in a negative way, checkbook journalists jump into the scene. They were ready to pay Michael Jackson’s personal servant to get “exclusives” about how he treats children. They were ready to pay Bill Clinton’s bodyguards when he was having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. They were ready to pay to pay for an “exclusive” from the store clerk who sold O.J. Simpson a knife before he faced the now famous murder charge. Checkbook journalism appeals to emotions. Writing about it in the November/December 1994 issue of Columbia Journalism Review, Louise Mangelkoth who teaches journalism at the Bemidji State University says: “Money taints the truth…..And stories themselves appeal to the lowest common denominator in terms of subject matter, audience and focus.”
In the United States tabloid journalism is used to boost circulation figures by practicing checkbook journalism among ordinary people who have a fascinating story to tell. Prof. Mangelkoth tells his students about various incidents that could lead to checkbook journalism boosting both circulation figures as well as bringing to public attention injustices that would never have been discovered. He talks of “the young mother whose ex husband has been charged with abducting their three year old daughter, the woman whose grandson accidentally shot and killed his brother, the student in our class who was shot in her backyard while having barbeque.” All these are good human interest stories that can be found in any society and through checkbook they can be obtained exclusively.
Prof. Mangelkoth sees the good side of tabloids as a means of making the voiceless be loudly heard. He says: “The tabloids greatest virtue is exactly that which makes people sneer at them…..they are often foolish and not very sensitive. As gatekeepers they are lousy, and that’s often fortunate for those who need them most. They will listen to your story when nobody else will, if it has the elements and the angles they are looking for. If we truly believe in access, that journalists should be dedicated to comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, the tabloids must be recognized as sharing that mission.”
The bad aspect of checkbook journalism is when it is accompanied with corruption. In Moscow where the media was for years muzzled by Communism, Glasnost has brought a very ugly aspect of checkbook journalism. Exposing it in the Columbia Journalism Review of July/August 1991 issue, Karen Dukess, a Tampa based writer and contributing editor of the English and Russian language Moscow Magazine says in “Moscow Rules” that Glasnosts has been good for foreign reporters , but it has also brought complications. “Along with openness came a less admirable characteristic of Gorbachev era: the open-handed demand for hard currency. Members of Moscow’s foreign press corps have been grumbling lately that some government authorities …….both bureaucrats and elected officials are asking to be paid for interviews, information and access.” He says if foreign journalists wanted to film the Moscow police in action, for instance, they would have to pay.
According to Vladimir V. Martinov, the Moscow Police Department liaison for television, journalists and filmmakers the cost ranges from $ 100 for brief filming to as much as $ 1,000 a day. Prepared footage of a string of arrests and other investigations goes for about $ n200 a minute. “It all depends on what you want to film, what kind of firm you represent and how long you want to use our employees,” says Martinov.
In 1990 the Foreign Correspondents’ Association in Moscow complained about these payments and according to Dukess the police said they would no longer charge accredited print journalists for the privilege of riding along in patrol cars or observing them at work. “Only television and commercial film crews would continue to be charged,” he says. For their part the police said they were swamped by the number of people wanting to film night time operations. The money collected from foreign correspondents did not go into officers’ pockets, but was used to purchase “much needed technical equipment”.
Discussing checkbook journalism in the 19th August issue of Taipei Times, Cheg Jim-Ming a professor in the Graduate Institute of Journalism at Chinese Culture University, admits that getting scoops is certainly the goal of all reporters. But since the scoops were exclusive the professor suggests that reporters and editors should have much higher standards for the credibility of such reports. At the very leas, he says, the scoops should meet basic professional requirements of accuracy, objectivity and fairness. Otherwise how can such “news” meet the test of both society and the media themselves? He asks.
“Exclusive news should be obtained through legal method and reasonable process. Exclusives obtained through dirty tricks hurt the media’s efforts to bolster its credibility,” he argues. In fact, he says, some methods of getting news stories have become jokes. He gives the example of Paul Burrell, the former butler of Diana, Princess of Wales, who wrote the book A Royal Duty to expose royal secrets, and was paid $ 550,000 by the Daily Mirror to publish the content of his book in a serialized form. This included Diana’s note to him which read: “My husband is planning ‘an accident” in my car, brakes failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry”.
The question of journalism’s taboo against purchasing news is discussed in the April 1999 issue of American Journalism Review by Kelly Heyboer, a reporter with the Star Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. The article called Paying for It reveals how Larry Flint offered big money for information and brought down a powerful Congressman. Heyboer says: “It was one of the most brazen moments in the not-all-together distinguish history of checkbook journalism. Last October, Hustler magazine publisher: Larry Flint placed an ad in Washington Post offering up to $ 1 million to anyone who could prove a member of Congress or a high ranking government official had carried on an adulterous affair. Before the year was over, information turned up by the ad had ended the political carrier of House speaker- designate Bob Livingston.
In January , at a heavily attended press conference , Flint was dishing the dirt on Georgia Republican Representative Bob Barr . At the press conference Flint predicted that all news organizations were going to be paying for stories the same way he had done . Though his prediction has not yet come true in Kenya the cut throat competition for exclusives among both mainstream and alternative media in the country creates the necessary condition for the germination of that eventuality.
But Heyboer says Flint’s prediction is not likely to (be) realized because “after all, its one of the commandments of journalisms (which says): Thou shall not pay for information. But he admits: “Only the tabloids, of both the supermarket and TV variety, regard news as a tradable commodity.
The manner in which the “mercenary” story was planted on journalists and the mysterious ways in which the alternative media opens up private cupboards full of smelly skeletons proves that politicians are prepared to use journalists to publish dirt about their opponents.
While openly criticizing the practice of paying for news, mainstream media have been known to accept in when they are eager to get an exclusive. The New York Times for example paid $ 1,000 in 1912 to the Titanic wireless operator for an exclusive interview. Heyboer has more examples: By the time Watergate rolled around, the television networks got involved. CBS News paid Nixon while House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman was paid at least $ I million for his story.” Former President Gerald Ford accepted a million dollars from NBC shortly after leaving office to serve as “exclusive advisor-consultant in news special”.
Paying for news raises yet another important question – are those receiving money from journalists telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Are they not always tempted to exaggerate in order to fatten the cheques they get from media houses? “I do not pay for interviews, no matter what the payment is called,” said Oprah Winfrey once when it was rumoured she was about to hand a fat cheque to Monica Lewinsky to appear in her show. When Lewinsky was the hottest news in the world it was rumoured that her representative was about to strike a deal with Oprah’s team when things fell apart. This was not because Oprah was uplifting any ethical principle but because Lewinsky was demanding Winfrey “turn over the marketing rights to videotapes to Lewinsky,” says Heyboer.
Good journalists from respectable media houses have always managed to get their exclusives without paying for them. The other important question that is still unanswered in Kenyan journalism is whether paying for news always involves money exchanging hands. Many journalism scholars believe media houses could offer free advertising, travel and a wide range of entertainment to maintain good news sources. Paying in kind, I suppose, is also unethical.
In 1995 the powerful ABC came under fire from ethicist for interviewing Michael Jackson and his then wife Lisa Marre Presley only after running $1 million worth of commercials promoting the artist. The interview was followed by ABC getting exclusive rights to air Jackson’s musical video. When the giants stoop so low ethical principles can be thrown out of the window. This was not the only time when ABC violated the code. According to Heyboer they did it again in 1997. He says: “(At that time) they paid a six figure sum video of an Australian landslide that left 18 people dead. ‘Prime Time Live’ landed an exclusive interview with a survivor, whose agent had sold ABC the videotape.” But according to ABC spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy, this did not amount to any unethical activity. She claims it is alright to pay consultants and for videotape footage media houses do not own.
Never before has circulation wars in the mainstream and alternative print media in Kenya been so intense. The competition to get more listeners and viewers is no less vigorous among the electronic media. Unfortunately all the so called exclusives have not been so professionally done. The Anglo Leasing exposé came from John Githongo and the so-called Armenian mercenary story was planted on journalists by Raila Odinga. Yet Kenya is full of mysterious stories crying for demystification. Who was the real person behind Tom Mboya’s, Pio Gama Pinto’s, and Robert Ouko’s murders? If any of the living players involved in any of the murderers came out with the “truth” exposing the facts surrounding it for a fee, he or she could demand any payment may be amounting to millions of Kenyan shillings from the present media sharks.
There are so many ex policemen, judges, and lawyers who have not told their stories yet. Some relatives of these political martyrs have also never uttered a word. The unknown stories, however, are a big challenge to real professional journalists engaged in serious investigative journalism.
In Kenya a much more serious problem in journalism does not seem to be that of paying for news. Rather the problem seems to be paying to get your specific news to seethe light of the day. Journalists, including editors, have been accused of being extremely corrupt and receiving money from news sources especially politicians.
In November 2005, when Kenyans participated in the first referendum, unsubstantiated rumour were circulating everywhere claiming senior journalists were bribed to popularise certain anti government politicians. On March 20, 2006 the Minister for Information and Communication , Mutahi Kagwe said in an article published by The Standard that if anyone made “an inquiry from any sincere media manager , one would learn that certain stories were written to besmirch persons not in the good books of the owner.” This is a subject for another chapter.
Though the practice is yet to be the order of the day scoops in many Western countries can be extremely expensive. In his popular book The Insider, Piers Morgan, the former Editor of the Daily Mirror describes a typical incident of paying for news. He says on Wednesday 17, November 1999, he received a call from a Max Clifford saying that he had a “dynamite” meaning very hot news.. Morgan explains that the dynamite was in fact a one fact story on Cherie Blair and wanted an equally dynamite cheque for it. Morgan listened to the fact and instantly agreed a fee with Max “not massively far from 50,000 British pounds. That is more than five million Kenyan shillings. Sand what was the scoop? Simply the fact that Cherie was pregnant at 45! And what was the justification for spending so much money just to be the first with the news about Prime Minister’s wife. According to Morgan, this was “journalism at its best!”
The debate about whether or not to pay for exclusives has been going on in journalism schools for a very long time. Many of them condemn the practice yet highly qualified editors keep their jobs by paying paroled criminals and self-confessed drug addicts large sums of money in order to extract from them private information about their weird lives. A large number of magazines in the Western world exist by publications of such exclusives.
The moral dilemma involved in the exercise has split practitioners down the middle. For some the ex convicts given the money by journalists have a story to tell and often they are the only people with the details of the story. According to the Kenyan Code if the story is of great significance to the “public interest” then it would be well and good to pay for it. There are scholars who believe paying for a dirty story makes the outcome after publication equally dirty as in the final analysis it makes criminals benefit from the crime.
Another name for the practice of paying for news is “checkbook journalism” which is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary of English language as journalism that involves the payment of money to an informant for the right to publish or broadcast news story. Discussing the controversial subject in his column Media Mix in the 26th June 2005 issue of the USA Today, Peter Johnson says the most well versed magazines in American checkbook journalism are People, US Weekly and Star which pay big money to photographers for exclusive photos of stars and their weddings, with their newborns, canoodling or doing anything that will pretty much guarantee newsstand sales.
Among the most popular celebrity magazines in the UK is OK! which, according to Johnson, added a new dimension to the celebrity journalism in 2005 when it launched its US version and promised to pay stars directly for exclusive access to their homes, lives and families. Inevitably checkbook journalism always fascinates journalism scholars when they debate the line between hard news and entertainment which touches on the private lives of celebrities and ex convicts. That line, they argue, is fading very fast even here in Kenya. In March 2006 for example, Kenyan journalists fed readers, viewers and listeners with a lot of hogwash about Armenian “crooks” who came to the country in a mysterious manner and established business deals with a young lady who happens to be the daughter of the ruling Narc party activist.
Paradoxically, that particular story was given a total news blackout by the international journalists based in Nairobi who only a couple of days before were splashing the Kenyan hottest story of the time when hooded policemen invaded The Standard editorial offices and its printing plant. Reason? The Armenian story was too petty and came close to what celebrity magazines in the Western world would spend millions to get exclusively. The kind of interest readers, viewers and listeners in Kenya showed as they followed revelations after revelations about Armenian “mercenaries” clearly indicated that Kenya was heading towards sensational journalism which is very often kept alive by checkbooks.
It is a dangerous trend that could easily anger the public if it discovered the true motive of the so-called Armenian exposés. The danger of checkbook journalism involving celebrities in that the publicity sensitive ones insist on approving copy and layouts even after accepting money from media houses. OK! Openly admits that it gives stars both picture and text approval which is a line ethically upright editors never cross, according to Johnson. When OK! was launched in the US the magazine’s CEO Christian…….? Said: “(Instead of checkbook journalism) the term we use is relationship journalism. We pay the celebrities directly because we prefer to get the true story as opposed to paying some waiter in a restaurant who overheard something a celebrity said,” Martha Nelson, Managing Editor of People acknowledges that she has paid for exclusives but she adds, “People has never, and will never, abandon editorial control of stories. We will never let subjects review a story, or approve the layouts, or do anything that would limit our editorial integrity.”
According to Sidney Goldberg, a New York media consultant who is also a senior vice president of United Media for Syndication the phrase “paying for news” reeks of sleaze and unethical behaviour. “The stench (makes) journalists in newspapers, TV studios, and the halls of academe, to hold their noses. How dare the media pay someone for information?” If you have a job with the media, he argues, it is perfectly honorable to be paid a salary or a fee. If you don’t and someone within the media pays you for your information then both the payer and the payee are violating the journalistic code of never paying for information. Writing for the website TCS (Tech Central Station) he brings up an interesting angle of the payee receiving money as a contributor.
This of course, he says, is only possible if the payee has the skills to organize his information into an article. One need not be a clairvoyant to predict that Kenya’s checkbook journalism, now in its infancy, will soon blossom into full maturity when tabloid journalism does the same. If and when journalism in Kenya is professionalized – and the swelling numbers of trained professionals are increasingly demanding this – the quacks now in newsrooms will soon be marginalized. That is when most of them will change from journalists into spies who will sell information to the professionals.
The bottom line in all this argues Goldberg, is that the media wants its product—news and features for free. But he add : “ an ‘informer’ who wants to be paid for his information by a ( reluctant) journalist can turn around and sell the information to a book firm – with a ghost writer if need be -- and be within the rule. The book can get great reviews and no reviewer will revile the author and/or ghost for getting paid for it by the publisher.”
The current battle for “exclusives” has become more and more suspicious among the mainstream media to such an extent that scoops have now been accepted as the yardstick of measuring professionalism among journalists in Kenya. It is obvious that within a very short time a proper celebrity magazine will be born in Kenya and it may even follow the OK! path of buying news from the subjects. The danger in doing so is obvious. The celebrities will only reveal the positive aspects of their lives and not the newsworthy story which obviously is what the people are interested in.
When celebrities make news in a negative way, checkbook journalists jump into the scene. They were ready to pay Michael Jackson’s personal servant to get “exclusives” about how he treats children. They were ready to pay Bill Clinton’s bodyguards when he was having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. They were ready to pay to pay for an “exclusive” from the store clerk who sold O.J. Simpson a knife before he faced the now famous murder charge. Checkbook journalism appeals to emotions. Writing about it in the November/December 1994 issue of Columbia Journalism Review, Louise Mangelkoth who teaches journalism at the Bemidji State University says: “Money taints the truth…..And stories themselves appeal to the lowest common denominator in terms of subject matter, audience and focus.”
In the United States tabloid journalism is used to boost circulation figures by practicing checkbook journalism among ordinary people who have a fascinating story to tell. Prof. Mangelkoth tells his students about various incidents that could lead to checkbook journalism boosting both circulation figures as well as bringing to public attention injustices that would never have been discovered. He talks of “the young mother whose ex husband has been charged with abducting their three year old daughter, the woman whose grandson accidentally shot and killed his brother, the student in our class who was shot in her backyard while having barbeque.” All these are good human interest stories that can be found in any society and through checkbook they can be obtained exclusively.
Prof. Mangelkoth sees the good side of tabloids as a means of making the voiceless be loudly heard. He says: “The tabloids greatest virtue is exactly that which makes people sneer at them…..they are often foolish and not very sensitive. As gatekeepers they are lousy, and that’s often fortunate for those who need them most. They will listen to your story when nobody else will, if it has the elements and the angles they are looking for. If we truly believe in access, that journalists should be dedicated to comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, the tabloids must be recognized as sharing that mission.”
The bad aspect of checkbook journalism is when it is accompanied with corruption. In Moscow where the media was for years muzzled by Communism, Glasnost has brought a very ugly aspect of checkbook journalism. Exposing it in the Columbia Journalism Review of July/August 1991 issue, Karen Dukess, a Tampa based writer and contributing editor of the English and Russian language Moscow Magazine says in “Moscow Rules” that Glasnosts has been good for foreign reporters , but it has also brought complications. “Along with openness came a less admirable characteristic of Gorbachev era: the open-handed demand for hard currency. Members of Moscow’s foreign press corps have been grumbling lately that some government authorities …….both bureaucrats and elected officials are asking to be paid for interviews, information and access.” He says if foreign journalists wanted to film the Moscow police in action, for instance, they would have to pay.
According to Vladimir V. Martinov, the Moscow Police Department liaison for television, journalists and filmmakers the cost ranges from $ 100 for brief filming to as much as $ 1,000 a day. Prepared footage of a string of arrests and other investigations goes for about $ n200 a minute. “It all depends on what you want to film, what kind of firm you represent and how long you want to use our employees,” says Martinov.
In 1990 the Foreign Correspondents’ Association in Moscow complained about these payments and according to Dukess the police said they would no longer charge accredited print journalists for the privilege of riding along in patrol cars or observing them at work. “Only television and commercial film crews would continue to be charged,” he says. For their part the police said they were swamped by the number of people wanting to film night time operations. The money collected from foreign correspondents did not go into officers’ pockets, but was used to purchase “much needed technical equipment”.
Discussing checkbook journalism in the 19th August issue of Taipei Times, Cheg Jim-Ming a professor in the Graduate Institute of Journalism at Chinese Culture University, admits that getting scoops is certainly the goal of all reporters. But since the scoops were exclusive the professor suggests that reporters and editors should have much higher standards for the credibility of such reports. At the very leas, he says, the scoops should meet basic professional requirements of accuracy, objectivity and fairness. Otherwise how can such “news” meet the test of both society and the media themselves? He asks.
“Exclusive news should be obtained through legal method and reasonable process. Exclusives obtained through dirty tricks hurt the media’s efforts to bolster its credibility,” he argues. In fact, he says, some methods of getting news stories have become jokes. He gives the example of Paul Burrell, the former butler of Diana, Princess of Wales, who wrote the book A Royal Duty to expose royal secrets, and was paid $ 550,000 by the Daily Mirror to publish the content of his book in a serialized form. This included Diana’s note to him which read: “My husband is planning ‘an accident” in my car, brakes failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry”.
The question of journalism’s taboo against purchasing news is discussed in the April 1999 issue of American Journalism Review by Kelly Heyboer, a reporter with the Star Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. The article called Paying for It reveals how Larry Flint offered big money for information and brought down a powerful Congressman. Heyboer says: “It was one of the most brazen moments in the not-all-together distinguish history of checkbook journalism. Last October, Hustler magazine publisher: Larry Flint placed an ad in Washington Post offering up to $ 1 million to anyone who could prove a member of Congress or a high ranking government official had carried on an adulterous affair. Before the year was over, information turned up by the ad had ended the political carrier of House speaker- designate Bob Livingston.
In January , at a heavily attended press conference , Flint was dishing the dirt on Georgia Republican Representative Bob Barr . At the press conference Flint predicted that all news organizations were going to be paying for stories the same way he had done . Though his prediction has not yet come true in Kenya the cut throat competition for exclusives among both mainstream and alternative media in the country creates the necessary condition for the germination of that eventuality.
But Heyboer says Flint’s prediction is not likely to (be) realized because “after all, its one of the commandments of journalisms (which says): Thou shall not pay for information. But he admits: “Only the tabloids, of both the supermarket and TV variety, regard news as a tradable commodity.
The manner in which the “mercenary” story was planted on journalists and the mysterious ways in which the alternative media opens up private cupboards full of smelly skeletons proves that politicians are prepared to use journalists to publish dirt about their opponents.
While openly criticizing the practice of paying for news, mainstream media have been known to accept in when they are eager to get an exclusive. The New York Times for example paid $ 1,000 in 1912 to the Titanic wireless operator for an exclusive interview. Heyboer has more examples: By the time Watergate rolled around, the television networks got involved. CBS News paid Nixon while House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman was paid at least $ I million for his story.” Former President Gerald Ford accepted a million dollars from NBC shortly after leaving office to serve as “exclusive advisor-consultant in news special”.
Paying for news raises yet another important question – are those receiving money from journalists telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Are they not always tempted to exaggerate in order to fatten the cheques they get from media houses? “I do not pay for interviews, no matter what the payment is called,” said Oprah Winfrey once when it was rumoured she was about to hand a fat cheque to Monica Lewinsky to appear in her show. When Lewinsky was the hottest news in the world it was rumoured that her representative was about to strike a deal with Oprah’s team when things fell apart. This was not because Oprah was uplifting any ethical principle but because Lewinsky was demanding Winfrey “turn over the marketing rights to videotapes to Lewinsky,” says Heyboer.
Good journalists from respectable media houses have always managed to get their exclusives without paying for them. The other important question that is still unanswered in Kenyan journalism is whether paying for news always involves money exchanging hands. Many journalism scholars believe media houses could offer free advertising, travel and a wide range of entertainment to maintain good news sources. Paying in kind, I suppose, is also unethical.
In 1995 the powerful ABC came under fire from ethicist for interviewing Michael Jackson and his then wife Lisa Marre Presley only after running $1 million worth of commercials promoting the artist. The interview was followed by ABC getting exclusive rights to air Jackson’s musical video. When the giants stoop so low ethical principles can be thrown out of the window. This was not the only time when ABC violated the code. According to Heyboer they did it again in 1997. He says: “(At that time) they paid a six figure sum video of an Australian landslide that left 18 people dead. ‘Prime Time Live’ landed an exclusive interview with a survivor, whose agent had sold ABC the videotape.” But according to ABC spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy, this did not amount to any unethical activity. She claims it is alright to pay consultants and for videotape footage media houses do not own.
Never before has circulation wars in the mainstream and alternative print media in Kenya been so intense. The competition to get more listeners and viewers is no less vigorous among the electronic media. Unfortunately all the so called exclusives have not been so professionally done. The Anglo Leasing exposé came from John Githongo and the so-called Armenian mercenary story was planted on journalists by Raila Odinga. Yet Kenya is full of mysterious stories crying for demystification. Who was the real person behind Tom Mboya’s, Pio Gama Pinto’s, and Robert Ouko’s murders? If any of the living players involved in any of the murderers came out with the “truth” exposing the facts surrounding it for a fee, he or she could demand any payment may be amounting to millions of Kenyan shillings from the present media sharks.
There are so many ex policemen, judges, and lawyers who have not told their stories yet. Some relatives of these political martyrs have also never uttered a word. The unknown stories, however, are a big challenge to real professional journalists engaged in serious investigative journalism.
In Kenya a much more serious problem in journalism does not seem to be that of paying for news. Rather the problem seems to be paying to get your specific news to seethe light of the day. Journalists, including editors, have been accused of being extremely corrupt and receiving money from news sources especially politicians.
In November 2005, when Kenyans participated in the first referendum, unsubstantiated rumour were circulating everywhere claiming senior journalists were bribed to popularise certain anti government politicians. On March 20, 2006 the Minister for Information and Communication , Mutahi Kagwe said in an article published by The Standard that if anyone made “an inquiry from any sincere media manager , one would learn that certain stories were written to besmirch persons not in the good books of the owner.” This is a subject for another chapter.
1 comment:
With regards to IMPORTANT stories, the money question is really neither here nor there.
Where the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, her paramour Dodi Fayed and their chauffeur, Henri Paul is concerned, TRUTH at all cost is paramount, money or no money.
There are two extremely important British witnesses who are being TOTALLY ignored:
RICHARD TOMLINSON; ex-MI6 officer. - In fact hunted and hounded ever since he pointed out years ago, in his affidavit to Hudge Hervé Stephan, the carbon-copy circumstances of the Paris crash with the planned and aborted assassination of Slobodan Milosovic.
Then BRENDA WELLS. She was an eye-witness at the crash with her French husband. They reported what they saw to the French police and were then advised to leave their home in the Parisien suburb of Champignay-sur-Marnes. Not only did they leave their home; they have COMPLETELY disappeared! Searched on Google there are over TWENTY references to this witness and her account. Searched on the lauded Operation Paget Report of Lord Stevens, there is not ONE reference!
What is clear is that Mohammed Al Fayed, with ALL his money is being stifled. In the end, the money angle with important news is incidental.
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