In memory of those felled by police bullets
There’s a video circulating online of the moment protesters occupied Parliament. It’s a horrifying clip to watch. A mass of angry youth, after overrunning police barricades, is seen entering the grounds of the august House, to the haunting soundtrack of gunfire, exploding teargas canisters and deafening chants of “Ruto Must Go”. Plainclothes officers wearing balaclavas, heavily armed with AK-47 rifles, can be seen retreating as the crowd approaches them menacingly. Death hangs in the air (a sniper was said to be lurking atop one of the nearby buildings), so the youth had to duck and crouch with their hands up to avoid getting shot at. Those scenes will forever be etched in our national memory.
The youth revolt – dominated by Generation Zs – started as a mild rejection of clauses in the controversial Finance Bill 2024. However, intense mobilisation on social media platforms, especially X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and TikTok, turned smouldering anger into an explosive rage that reached its climax on Tuesday 25 June, when the whole country erupted and took to the streets.
Decades of plunder and poverty
As a millennial working in mainstream media, I watched the protests with both fascination and apprehension. Fascination in the sense that we, the citizens, have once again reclaimed our power to remind the political establishment who is boss. More often, in Africa, politicians have simply ignored the festering grievances of the youth. Instead, what we have is a culture where the political elites amass wealth as young people – highly educated and skilled – are given handouts even as they languish in poverty, desperation and misery. In his book, The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence, Martin Meredith eloquently captures this primitive accumulation: “The state was regarded as a foreign institution that could be used for personal and community gain without any sense of shame or accountability.” Such a political culture, if not changed, is bound to bring most nation-states to the political and economic brink, leading to civil disobedience and anarchy as recently witnessed in the country.
On the other hand, I was apprehensive because there is a great risk that pertinent lessons learned during this revolutionary moment might be lost on an institution such as the legacy media, which plays a vital role in informing and educating the citizens about the salient issues at stake such as education, healthcare, security, affordable housing, access to clean water and electricity, quality jobs and good roads, among others. To their credit, the media have highlighted important stories about high-level corruption, politics of patronage, unfair tendering processes and government wastage through the allocation of funds for non-essential items. They have gone to great lengths to expose a broken healthcare system, an inefficient bureaucracy that makes it difficult for citizens to access essential services, and weak policing and investigative agencies that have resulted in runaway crime. The media coverage has contributed significantly to the radicalisation of youth who joined the nationwide protests.
Media shortcomings
However, the coverage has not been without its shortcomings. The news in Kenyan newspapers, radio and TV stations is still heavily biased in favour of commercial and political interests at the expense of human interest stories. These outlets are struggling to generate enough revenue to sustain business, a situation that has caused a ripple effect on editorial independence, leading to self-censorship and less focus on investigative projects that were in the past used to expose corruption and abuse of office. The highly popular Jicho Pevu series by Mohammed Ali and Case Files by Dennis Onsarigo (both aired on KTN) are good examples of public interest journalism that today is hard to come by on traditional media platforms.
In a policy paper titled Media Under Pressure: The Trouble With Press Freedom in Kenya, Prof. George Nyabuga of Aga Khan University captures this worrying trend. He writes that, because of digital disruption, there has been “the emergence of online censorship tactics by state actors and political interests”. He adds that “navigating this digital terrain while safeguarding journalistic integrity and independence remains a critical challenge for the media”. However, to ignore the interests of Millennials and Gen Zs, who constitute up to 55.47 per cent of the Kenyan population, is to play with fire, and the mainstream media cannot afford to take that route. Below are some lessons for them.
Digital opportunities and top talent
Despite its best efforts, the press is still not doing enough to address issues affecting these critical demographics. A 2023 study titled Media Consumption in An Evolving Digital World offers useful insights worth revisiting. For example, it notes that while Millennials and Gen Zs want to consume “content that is affordable, interesting, relevant, attractive, and available/reliable”, this is often not what they get. Instead, they are asked to pay for poorly researched stories that rarely answer the “why” and the “how”. As we noted earlier, Kenya’s media is heaving under the weight of declining revenues and mass layoffs that have led to the exit of talented employees. They are finding it increasingly hard to tap into the lucrative market these demographics represent because of a shortage of manpower. So, is there a way out?
The media must continue to seek viable ways of sustaining its journalism other than resorting to layoffs and retrenchment because the approach seems not to be working. There are still vast opportunities in the digital sphere that are yet to be fully explored. Stories packaged in video format, for instance, are popular among these groups, and research supports this, including a 2023 report by the Media Council of Kenya. How many media houses are taking this route seriously by sufficiently investing in modern video equipment and hiring top talent to help the millennials and Gen Zs make sense of their world and who they are, as well as answering their “whys” and “hows”?
Plague of fake news and propaganda
It’s now a fact that the legacy media outlets are the new purveyors of misinformation and disinformation. Again, this has been worsened by newsrooms depleted of talented editors and reporters. The lack of experienced staff to guide the new crop of journalists means there’s a lot of trial and error, which has devastating consequences for the type of information that is distributed to the public. According to the MCK report, “misinformation and disinformation emerged as the primary concern about the media in 2022 and 2023”. Inadequate training opportunities have also contributed to the spread of fake news because journalists lack the tools to detect truth from lies. In a fast-paced digital information highway, media companies will have to consistently retool their employees to regain the credibility and trust of their audiences or face severe backlash.
More young people in the news
Our TV panels are dominated by old people discussing everything under the sun, including youth affairs. The writing is now on the wall. It is time to let the youth speak for themselves. In the aftermath of the deadly protests, producers have been scrambling desperately to invite youthful guests to help analyse news. The optics alone have obviously attracted new audiences for the stations. It’s both a win for our democracy in terms of equal representation, and for the media houses in the form of increased advertising revenue.
Moving forward, the anti-tax protests, which have historical echoes of the Soweto Uprising that broke out in South Africa on 16 June 1976 (because they also involved younger people), are a turning point in that they have created a shift in Kenya’s political and cultural life. Like the youth’s fight against apartheid, Kenya’s Gen Zs have proved that you can be culturally woke (by being tech savvy, dressing stylishly and speaking the language of the digital age), but also politically conscious enough to understand that heavy taxation will never be the cure for the endemic corruption, impunity, abuse of office and chronic government wastage that have become the norm in the Kenya Kwanza regime.
