BONYO'S BONE: Futility of the gag

Yet again, and thankfully, the courts have stepped in to block the assault.

But make no mistake, these attacks are not random. They point to a deliberate strategy by the state and its operatives to control the message.

Perception is the most expensive currency in the world.

He who frames the story first controls how it ends, and every serious power player knows this.

Control the media, and you control the narrative.

Control the narrative, and you control society, its attention, its enemies, even its elections.

Over the last decade, Kenya’s media has operated on a knife’s edge. Successive regimes have tried, in some form, to clip its wings. Not for national interest. Not to uphold ethics. But out of political convenience.

The latest and most brazen assault comes from the Communications Authority of Kenya. The regulator accused media houses of “fanning protests” simply for airing them live, a claim both flawed and dangerous, but supported in Parliament by the Cabinet Secretary for ICT, William Kabogo.

Let’s set the record straight. Without that live coverage, Boniface Mwangi, the hawker shot point-blank by rogue police, might have quietly been reported as a suicide. Or a road accident.

Without those TV images, the goons parading as “counter-protesters” might have done far worse damage in silence and in darkness.

But here’s a question, why the sudden outrage over media coverage, when the Constitution guarantees every Kenyan the right to information?

This is, once again, a knee-jerk attempt at censorship disguised as public concern.

More worrying, by February 2023, there were at least 22 laws in active use to silence media and journalists in this country. That’s not regulation. That’s intimidation.

And every time these laws have been tested, the courts have upheld the rights of journalists.

Because legacy media, or traditional media, still upholds the basics: balance, objectivity, clarity, and credibility.

Let me get academic, just briefly.

The media is not a luxury in a democracy. It’s the engine room.

It creates what we call the public sphere, the space where ideas clash, views are tested, and democracy breathes.

It is the bridge between the government and the governed.

It is where politicians speak and where the people respond.

That’s not chaos. That’s accountability.

Let me close with this, any attempt on media freedoms, from overt censorship, persecution via the law, and violence against journalists, is democratic backsliding.

Finally, one of the important rights in a democracy is a free press. This means that people who report the news should be allowed to do their jobs without the government telling them what to do.

That is my bone tonight.