KAIKAI’S KICKER: Kisiangani era - 'Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short!'

On my Kicker tonight, media headlines—specifically newspaper headlines—have lately become a subject of stirring discussions. And for two good reasons: one, a lot of things, many of them absurd in nature, do take place in our country, Kenya. Secondly, media practitioners, especially our colleagues writing newspaper headlines, are on the ‘kaende kaende’ mode, and they’re having none of that ‘patriotic or don’t show your-mother-is-naked’ tranquilizer anymore. They are, and rightfully as public-spirited media must, telling it as it is—black and white—calling a spade a spade and not a big spoon.

Now, let’s look at the first reason for media headlines: the things that actually happen in Kenya. You see, I agree with those Kenyans who tell me that watching news on television is depressing. One very loyal viewer once confronted me with the question, “Is there no good news in this country?” Well, the next day, the same viewer called me about the day’s newspaper headlines, and we had a perspective-changing discussion as I took the viewer through the thorough newsroom processes and the deep deliberations that inform the writing of headlines in print media and the crafting of what is known as the running order or rundown in the electronic media. Allow me to spare you the intricacies of those processes by just summarizing them as meticulous, fair-minded, and heavily public-interest spirited.

Now, I always commiserate with those that argue with a news headline as I do with those who pick quarrels with the arrow on a signpost. And this, for the simple reason that whatever ends up in a news headline has, by a 100 percent chance, actually happened. It is not about liking or hating what we watch or read, but about what it is that happened, whether merry or morbid. I also submit that those headlines, some of them as annoying as they may be, constitute a crucial, necessary finger on the pulse of the nation.

So, I totally understand it when my fellow countryman wakes up feeling they slept or are waking up to a crime scene. It is okay to feel that way, fellow Kenyan, because you are probably in one. Yes, it is okay to feel like that. That famous scene-of-crime yellow tape labeled ‘Do Not Cross’ should be used to mark the country’s international boundaries. And why not? In a country where just today, a newspaper headline told us how Kenyan taxpayers will pay over one billion shillings to a briefcase company as compensation for land that had already been acquired and compensation paid for the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway. And this is just one case. How many similar cases lie unpublished in the claim books of the National Land Commission or the Ministry of Lands? Crime Exhibit 1.

Another headline told us about the pain, suffering, and fury of millions of public servants—including policemen and teachers—who, alongside their dependents, cannot access health services because their government insurance is declared not valid by service providers. How about the shower of tears among other patients and relatives in hospitals across the country? Crime Scene Exhibit Number 1 Million…

And all this is current. If we jog our memories a few weeks or months back, you will remember the abductions or forced disappearances, the extrajudicial killings, the sheer impunity of some institutions and persons… News headlines told you all, because it happened.

So, when earlier this week a government official purported to ban government advertising to a media house on account of its newspaper headlines, he, in a rare moment of personal merit, earned the next headline—and indeed, a front-page screamer. A man who, in many ways, acquired a name and a face through television cameras, including here in this very studio, has seemingly chosen to dedicate his time in government to settling personal scores with media platforms that wisely and rather belatedly dropped him as a commentator or political analyst a few years ago.

Earlier today, the High Court pronounced itself and faulted this man for treating government advertisements like little sweets to be doled out of his trouser’s back pocket. Later this evening, President William Ruto acted, and tonight, the phrase ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’—coined by philosopher Thomas Hobbes—perfectly describes the stint of Prof. Edward Kisiangani as Principal Secretary of our line ministry, the Ministry of Information, Communications, and Technology.

To Prof. Kisiangani, good riddance and good night!