Can The Daily Nation Be Trusted In Elections 2007?

The latest information reaching this blogger is that a senior Nation newspapers manager has promised the current government favorable coverage in the run up to the elections. I will give more details on this after I have verified certain facts in the report, which I received on Friday from a trusted source.

However, reading through the latest editions of the newspaper which has recently been hit by a major sex-for-promotions scandal, a keen observer can't help but see glaring inconsistencies that do not augur well for free, fair and balanced reporting and analysis in the forthcoming general elections.

For instance, although Kenyans know that there is major infighting within both ODM-Kenya and Narc-Kenya, reading through the Nation, the impression one gets is that the problem in ODM is very serious and the one in Narc is not. This is not true. In fact keen political observers point to the fact that the Narc-Kenya infighting is capable of causing much more damage to the party than the much-predicted split in ODM-Kenya with Kalonzo Musyoka expected to withdraw. Such a move, if it happens, will leave most of ODM-Kenya still intact with only Kalonzo's Kamba community withdrawing from the coalition. Even if Kalonzo leaves with the ODM-Kenya registration certificate, it will be of little consequence as long as the other constituent parties can hold on to their merger. They can always find another umbrella political party.

This is not the only change a keen observer will note in recent editions of the Daily Nation and sister paper, Sunday Nation.

There is also the fact that sensational (gutter-press-like) headlines have crept into the pages of Kenya's most prestigious daily newspaper. Readers are increasingly seeing very sensational headlines that hardly reflect the content. This is a clear sign of a newspaper struggling to boost circulation; only that this is not the way to go about it. Long-term circulation gains come from content and not sensational headlines. Ask the East African Standard and they will verify this after a decade of experimentation with sensational and misleading headlines.

The truth is that for sometime now, the Daily Nation has continuously lost touch with the ordinary Kenyan. Gone are the heady 70s and 80s when senior editors would have a regular drink at some dingy Nairobi bars and mix with "kumbafus" and other ordinary folks. In fact the senior managers enjoy crazily high salaries that put them in a certain class that is a very small minority in Kenya currently. So how would you expect them to produce a newspaper that would appeal to most Kenyans?

What this means is that going into the elections, the views expected from this newspaper will mostly be elitist and will tend to support retention of the status quo. This is exactly what most Kenyan voters (who do not earn a monthly salary of Kshs 400,000 sitting and burping nyama choma fumes all day in some air-condition offices looking for article ideas in the snobbish Times of London while keeping an eye on pretty ankles) want to get away from.

Is this really the sort of newspaper that Kenyans can trust going into the general elections?

Interestingly TV news (especially from KTN) is proving to be much more accurate and unbiased. One of the reasons for this is that there is hardly time to analyze and kill stories and what usually happens is that TV news editors simply air what they have. Kenyans are therefore much more likely to get a clearer picture of what is going on from their prime time TV news.

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