19. Accountability

The ethical principle of accountability challenges journalism professionals on three levels. It challenges them on personal, institutional and societal levels. On a personal level every journalists ought to be ethically awake almost all the time. When chasing a story, when writing it and even when publishing it. At all these three stages a journalist’s uprightness on ethical matters are constantly challenged. The bigger the story the greater the challenge.

Accountability in journalism in the Kenyan context has absolutely nothing to do with what is popularly known in America as Accountability Journalism which, according to the Associated Press, is allowing reporters to tell the truth as they see it rather than by being guided by impartiality and fair play. But according to Steve Boriss, who teaches journalism at Washington University in St. Louis, accountability journalism is a sham because it allow opinion in news articles.

That aside, there has probably been no time when Kenyan journalists were more challenged ethically than when they covered the post election violence. Many journalists were carried away by the excitement of the time and gathered, wrote and published stories which today appear to have contributed, to a certain extent, to the high level of emotionalism that led the country into the shameful outbreak of tribal and violent confrontation.

Indeed both the Waki and Kriegler reports point an accusing finger to journalists and the role they played in pushing the country from the frying pan into the fire. According to the Waki Report, before, during, and after the elections, politicians, government, NGOs, members of the media itself, and parts of the public, all had views about whether and how the spread of information through the print and broadcast media had contributed to the 2007 post election violence. Waki, therefore, asked a number of individuals to testify before him concerning the role of the media in the post election violence.

The  report actually exposes that many witnesses appearing before Waki recalled with horror, fear, and disgust the negative and inflammatory role of vernacular radio stations in their testimony and statements to the Commission. In particular, they singled out KASS FM as having contributed to a climate of hate, negative ethnicity, and having incited violence in the Rift Valley.

It goes on to reveal that there were also similar complaints in other parts of the country even though they did not come directly to the attention of the Commission. These, according to the report, included the vernacular music and negative ethnicity allegedly coming from Kikuyu FM stations including Kameme, Inooro, Coro, and others in other different parts of the country.

Just before the outbreak of the clashes tempers throughout the country were high. Newspaper headlines were sensational; and the question to ask now is whether or not the inflammatory election campaign stories could have been covered differently. On December 2^nd 2007, for example , The Sunday Standard headline screamed “NO RETREAT” in capital letters, followed by a huge kicker reading “No surrender”. Another smaller kicker said “Raila and Kibaki in a rat race in Coast and Rift as top 3 go for each other’s throat.

As if that was not exciting enough the story ran: “It is December ’07 and two days into the General Election month, the competitors are in the Karate’s ‘no retreat no surrender’ mode. It is all systems go and the comfort, because of the homestretch leg, has taken a back seat. But more significantly it was the week parties strove to calm raging fires in their bellies over the sham primaries and the sour after-taste the losers were left with”.  

On December 3^rd 2007 The Standard splash headline read “Its now or never”  and the kicker said: “Race against time: It’s an all out war for votes by Kibaki and key rivals Raila and Kalonzo as ECK set to unveil the 21-day official campaign period”. The Sunday Nation of December 23^rd 2007 also screamed in a headline saying “It’s attack mode in the eleventh hour”. The kicker said: “Candidates trade last-gasp blows as end draws nearer”.

 

The Daily Nation of December 3^rd had a headline reading “Propaganda war” with a kicker saying: As the case for State House intensifies, parties have gone into overdrive to paint rivals as unsuited for leadership, and there is no sign of let-up in the poll battle”.  

With the advantage of hindsight and cooler heads journalist can look at the treatment of those stories and ask themselves whether they would have handled the explosive situation differently.

What, if any, should have been the changes to be made in the stories I have given examples of? Could those stories be watered down without changing the meaning and without disobeying yet another important ethical principle of Accuracy? To get proper professional answers to these questions the ethical principle of Accountability comes into play. It all begins with the individual journalists who handled the sensitive stories. Each one of them should personally convince themselves that they did their best and would not hesitate to repeat the same approach of handling a story in similar situation.

If the individual journalists are honest with themselves, they would probably find a professional way of telling the same story in a watered down manner without changing any facts. But the matter of accountability can be so personal that individual journalists have to do a lot of soul-searching to arrive at an honest answer.

When it comes to institutional accountability the whole matter becomes a little bit more public with professional views getting expressed openly in a workshop situation. Well established institutions go as far as hiring academics to lead  discussions on ethical issues which are normally conducted on regular intervals. I first learnt about this way of sensitizing journalists on ethical principles at The St Petersburg Times in Florida where I was attached for a moth as the Managing Editor of The Daily Nation.

While there I learnt that Editors become more professional when they remove themselves from ivory towers and engage in serious professional discussions on ethical issues with almost everyone in the editorial department regardless of the positions they hold. On issues such as accountability everyone who handles any story in the newsroom should be concerned and should be invited to express his or her views openly without victimization.

If such a workshop was to be held at the Daily Nation or The Standard to examine the coverage of the 2007 elections many interesting views could have been expressed showing how tribal and political loyalties played their part in determining the manner in which various stories were treated at that time. Accountability means the power of the professional ability to reexamine oneself and determine whether or not some mistakes were made in collecting, writing and editing stories. Honest self examination always leads to correcting the future in handling sensitive stories. With regular and constant self examination any professional journalists perfects his level of accountability. An institution achieves the same goals by constantly and regularly following the same process of self examination through candid workshops and symposia.

Self examination would reveal journalism fell to the bottom low level in the coverage of the 2007 election. Similar self examination, however, would reveal very high standards of professional coverage of the just ended referendum. At that time President Mwai Kibaki challenged the media to play an objective watchdog role by naming and shaming those people who engaged in hate speech, lies and negative ethnic persuasion. It was the President’s Madaraka Day open challenge to professionalism in journalism. No sooner did the President make the challenge than the Daily Nation published a story on page five of Wednesday June 2nd’s paper headlined “Ruto: New law will legalize gay union”. 

Keen observers wanted to test the Daily Nation’s professional standards vis-à-vis the President’s challenge. Ruto’s claim was definitely a lie but it was a newsworthy lie since prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest and even consequences were its news values. It is a story no journalist worth his salt could ignore. The best way to handle it was to engage in interpretative reporting and the Daily Nation did so in the most admirable manner.

The story started by saying the Higher Education Minister William Ruto claimed gay marriages would be legal if the Proposed Constitution was passed into law. But the paper was quick to point out to its readers that the new constitution specifically outlawed gay marriages and quoted the Proposed Constitution’s Chapter Four, Article 45 (2) which says that every adult has the right to marry a person of the opposite sex. This manner of reporting which actually obeys the ethical principle of accuracy exposed Ruto as a politician whose utterances suffered from a serious deficiency of truth.

Today editors at the Daily Nation  can look back with pride and account to its readers why it had to engage in interpretative journalism. Institutional Accountability sometimes requires the existence of an ombudsman in a newspaper, radio or television station to do nothing but explain to viewers , readers and listeners why certain things are done by media houses. Whenever a paper takes a political stand, for example, the reasons for such a stand can be explained both in the editorial columns and through explanations by the ombudsman who should also be able to answer all questions asked by readers , viewers and listeners.

As far as communal accountability in journalism is concerned professionals should be in a position to account to the community every step they take that may, in one way or another, affect the community. While doing so they should know every community has its own yardsticks measuring what is right against what is wrong. In general Kenyan community abhor both thieving and thieves to such an extent that when one is caught red handed committing the crime of theft, the punishment is instant death by stoning.

It is extremely strange that a community that is so readily abrupt in  imposing  the death penalty for petty crimes such as stealing bananas or vegetables at the marketplace , is paradoxically so docile and almost absolutely hopeless while dealing with reckless matatu drivers who kill members of the same community with impunity. To be accountable to a community with such strange behaviours journalists have to be extremely daring and walk where angles fear to tread.

Condemning primitive community behaviour such as mob justice is quite acceptable to me while calling to wananchi to resist being killed like chickens on Kenyans roads is probably a professional challenge that needs to be fulfilled. While serving the community journalists should know boundaries that cannot be crossed. A detailed story explaining how female genital mutilation is inflicted, for example, would cause a public outcry. The outcry would turn into a public revolt if that story was explicitly told with photographic illustrations. Being accountable to the readers is to understand instinctively what would offend or disturb the pubic.          

Sometimes a certain degree of self censorship is called for when dealing with stories that professional journalists know are likely to cause disharmony, discontent or disgust. Today journalists may have to exercise some voluntary self censorship with the ethical principle of Accountability in mind. In not so distant a past self censorship in journalism was the order of the day in Kenya. As Dr. Bitange Ndemo, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Communications testified before the Waki Commission,  the media in this country had been controlled by the state formally from the 1930s until the mid- 1990s.

According to the Waki report he explained that as KANU still was in power up to 2002, the expanding media continued to be subject to harassment, torture, imprisonment, and fines for expressing their views. Censorship and self censorship also ensued, stemming from fear of reprisals by the state. Dr. Ndemo told the Commission that various media outlets continued to voice the views of the ruling party KANU as late as the 1990s even following the 1991 repeal of section 2A of the constitution and the return to multi party democracy in Kenya.

He noted that only after the 2002 election did the Government engage in a process of liberalization. This included licensing many new stations, something he told Commission that positively affected all parts of the media. That being the case it is even more important for professional journalists to be upright in upholding ethical principles especially that of Accountability.

The Code says Journalists and all media practitioners should recognize that they are accountable for their actions to the public, the profession and themselves. So far I have endeavored to discuss personal, institutional and societal accountability. I have assumed that when one is upright with these three he or she will automatically be professionally accountable. To be professionally accountably as far as professional ethics are concerned is to adhere to every single principle without any exception.

That means gathering, writing and editing stories fairly and accurately. It also means always being professionally independent; respecting and championing the cause of freedom of expression , the media and information; always being professionally impartial; trying to be absolutely fair to everyone ; remaining relevantly decent in all the different interpretations of the word; and above all always being professionally responsible.

The Code also says professional journalists should actively encourage adherence to these standards by all journalists and media practitioners; and   respond to public concerns, investigate complaints and correct errors promptly; while recognizing that they are duty-bound to conduct themselves ethically.