Reporters: Get Kenyan Stories Right

I have been absorbing the news here as much as I can over the last few weeks, and it has been swathed in the old style of reporting on Kenya and Africa. With lots of references to tribal chaos and senseless brutality, many of the stories presented a la the old mode of ‘those Africans and their fighting’.

Just today I read a headline that seemed to link some b-school students with bringing hope to Kenya’s chaos, and I just wondered when this media lumping of stories will end. Their project in Kenya happened to be timed in Kenya at the same time as the elections, and their venture with rural sustainable enterprise would probably have made it to this blog otherwise. It starts: “They went for the beads. They left for their lives.” Go see the rest of the article that barely mentions the cause of the conflict, nor mentions why such a provocative title as ‘tribal chaos’ just happens to contrast with a report on a U.S. student- led project.

The media is provocative. We understand the fourth estate has its mandate. I want to try and understand why there is such a negative view of Africa and Africans, from the earliest media accounts of what happened in the first days of colonialism to present. The Society of Professional Journalists reports that journalism schools, the few of which are accredited ( 100 out of 450) woefully meet diversity standards for women and people of color. With a culture of graduating mostly white males into the profession, the ranks of journalists at top jobs are filled with the same demographic of journalist, who we commonly reference as ‘the Man’. I digress, however.
As far as reporting of the international stories goes, the cadre of reporters going into African conflict suffers the lack of historical context needed to enter another country, especially when telling local tales. Many of them enter the country in question with a prepared list of the people that they ought to interview, who they duly interview, as well as trade information with other international journalists. The story then goes over the net to the editors and we wonder when many of these stories started sounding so similar. No doubt many are true, factually reported, and timely. I query the references to Africa and its people hidden in the tag lines with bombastic catch phrases.

While this is not the case for all international reporters, it generally holds over a large cross-section of the staffing. In the United States, the schools are not known for their wide offering of courses in world history to youngsters. When the journalists reach their training schools, they are often immersed into rubrics of reporting often before basic economics, political science and other building blocks of a world view. Often the training from the first day of school hinders widespread learning, of the variety we used to call ‘general knowledge’ more than people care to imagine.

I cannot even venture into the importance of building cultural competence. One could define cultural competence as the ability to interact in a culture that is not your own in a way that allows you to appreciate the language, culture and sensitivities of the people. A big way to do this is through foreign language competence, which the American Council on Education states that the U.S. is lagging in. The Council estimates that only six fluent Arabic speakers work in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. Let us not get into whether there are fluent speakers of Swahili, a major language in East and Central Africa, nor whether there are any who speak Somali, Amharic or any other local language. And come to think of it, are there any Luo or Kikuyu speakers, for example. Methinks not, but I will gladly take correction.Without such a basic foundational language, and few writers and journalists taking specialized courses in specific African area studies, there is little to suggest that the cultural competence of the reporters is increasing.

As many of the headlines and tasteless display of our maimed and dead, there still exists compelling evidence that suggests that Africa in the eyes of many foreign journalists: seems to have no history beyond the present, Africans can be evil savages with a thirst for blood or a disarrayed people in need of redemption, and, that Africans are inherently different. Do these assumptions justify treating images of Africans at their weakest as voyeuristic novelty cards for front pages. Many good stories exist, however, the best stories came from people with a genuine desire to connect the world with a comprehensive view of the post-elections violence.

So as long as there is a media culture presented by one demographic to a diverse audience, and as long as there remains that aloofness of foreigners to African issues, good luck trying to find stories that go beyond the surface of African conflict. And the association of other events that happened amid the violence with the loss of Kenyans will undermine efforts to take resolution of the conflict to a higher level. So reporters, get it right or find someone who will.

Lobbying in the U.S for Kenya hconres283.org

 Dear Friends,

As you might know, Kenya is currently facing, perhaps, the toughest test of its unity and peace in the face of violence precipitated by a flawed election last December. According to most reports there have been close to 700 deaths caused by post-election violence and hundreds of thousands of mostly poor Kenyans displaced. The violence has not let up, especially lately, and the dead and displaced continue to increase. Against this background, there have been mediation efforts led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to have President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga reach a political settlement and begin the process of healing and rebuilding. There are some initial signs of a willingness by both sides to compromise for the sake of peace. Local and international pressure will help increase the speed and improve the quality of the process.

As a result of an effort driven by Kenyans living in America, Congressman Donald Payne (NJ) and Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John E. Sununu (R-NH) have introduced a bill in their respective legislative houses calling for a resolution to the political crisis at home. If passed through both houses, such a bill would lend influential weight to the international call for a peaceful and long-lasting resolution in Kenya. You can help by contacting your Member of Congress and Senator and asking them to support the pending bill, which is currently at the committee stage. Write a letter, send a fax, shoot an email or make a call - the more personalized, the more likely it is to be read or heard.

You can find a sample letter here: http://www.hconres283.org/SampleLetter.pdf
Talking points: http://www.hconres283.org/talkingpoints.pdf
How to find your Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
How to find your Member of Congress: http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml
Draft Bill:http://www.hconres283.org/HConRes283.pdf

For more resources and information on this effort please visit: http://www.hconres283.org

As we continue to diagnose and debate the causes and possible solutions to the crisis in Kenya, let’s do what we can to contribute towards hastening a peaceful resolution in the country. Thanks very much and please forward this appeal for action to others.

Many thanks!
PS: You can also help by contributing towards the relief efforts to provide food, shelter and clothing to the hundreds of thousands of displaced Kenyans, spearheaded by the Kenya Red Cross, please visit: http://www.kenyaredcross.org/. The donation widget is on the bottom right corner of the homepage.

Can I Get A Witness! USHAHIDI.COM Launch

When violence broke out in what seemed to be a hundred places at once, the news seemed to come and lack verification. The mobile networks were jammed as people called, text-messaged in a bid to account for their loved ones. The further away you were, the worse the feeling got. I, for one was sure that there was a lot more that was under-reported. I was not alone, as the launch today of Ushahidi proves. ushahidi.com is a site where people can send news on different parts of Kenya and the news records as a Google thumbnail on where the action is happening and what is on the scene.

Now much of the country faces humanitarian crises and several aid organizations such as the Red Cross are working on getting food, clothing, shelter and medical care to the displaced and those bereaved. As we send forth our donations, and give out of the ‘abundance of our Kenyan poverty’ as one mother described it, innovative Kenyans are working on reporting mechanisms.

So much was the need for accurate information that a few people faced the brunt of corroborating stories and reporting them too. For an alternative source in future, Ushahidi.com has launched to allow people info on Kenya as we were when the media blackout and underreporting of government figures occurs. They came together to start working on a way to accommodate alternative media such as mobile texts( still to come) and individual bloggers and freelance journalists.

An early visitor to the site commented that we ought to make material efforts to help and get supplies to the people who need them. I argue that for all the people of Kenya, we were starved for a lack of information. In the most violent riots, it was the relatives and friends who ensured that we were aware of what was going on. Today, Ushahidi.com( Swahili for “witness”) was launched.

In the words of the creators, the best way that we can make this happen is to make sure that the people on the ground, ordinary wananchi ( ordinary Kenyans) know that the service. The site has a simple, clean design.

For more of the same, Hash, KenyanPundit,

Why do we do something now?

Kenyans have had clashes and conflicts. You only hear of the people in their hundreds or their thousands, but you never hear the story. The site is accepting news about the individuals who lost their lives, and all kinds of news and link ups on what happened. In the works is text-messaging.

What amazes me is that this site was put together in a matter of days by a small team, and that they can get this up and stat running it on a constant basis is nothing short of good intercontinental team work, skill and determination to do something. Of course, there is still so much more that can be done in terms of providing assistance.

Many thanks to the people behind USHAHIDI including the authors of the following sites and blogs.

mashada.com kobiainteractive.com whiteafrican.com mentalacrobatics.com/think afromusing.com/blog

skunkworks-ke.blogspot.com kenyanpundit.com

Nikki Giovanni poet, teacher at Virginia Tech said, “We will prevail”. I agree with her. Even if two or twenty politicians incite Kenyans to violence, and many are lost, thousands injured and millions disillusioned, we will rise yet again. Despite what people say, ‘we have no otherwise’, but up from here.

UPDATE

More you can do with Ushahidi.com

Send in reports via +447624802635 ( In Kenya about KShs. 10/USD 0.16)

You can email your reports and images to tips@ushahidi.com

Add reports on the peace efforts.

Ways that you a how can help.

Kenya: Could You Feel This?

Kenyans young and old watched the news and listened on the radio, speechless that the events that were ongoing in Kenya were threatening our beloved country. Many of us dared not utter the word ‘war’, because we said, “It is Kenya, we are not like that”.The anger about the flawed polls was one thing, but the spillover events saw neighbor turned on neighbor. Unbelievable.

I hoped that the violence that was being reported would stop and tried to close my ears to the threat of words like ‘genocide’ and ‘civil war’. Those words had never been part of our beyond the vocabulary of every day Kenyans. Like many Kenyans all over the world, I scoured the web for alternative reports of what was going on on the ground.

Being so removed from the country, it was hard to gauge the severity of the situation. Were those numbers real? Was there something that even the ubiquitous observers had missed? With Safaricom jammed on New years’ day, I went to the net. A friend asked whether the violence in Kenya and Pakistan were related. Now what do you say to someone like that? Google it? I was too far away from home and my people, I knew for sure. And I was weary of all the waiting, of when it would truly end.

Fortunate enough to have a computer and internet access, I set up camp at my desk, and bleary eyed, I took stock of the AP, Reuters, BBC and other mega-media reports. I waited for time to come to morning, so that I could call home, waiting for the morning time, when I knew people would switch on their mobiles and actually talk. (In some places, people switch off  cell phones at sunset,in the whole neighborhood).I myself found chat rooms hard to navigate, since who knew what was reportedly true and what was false. People from every country who could blog rolled out of bed and wrote bleak accounts of the ‘Kinya’ they knew of the 1960s,70s and 80s; seasoned bloggers dutifully covered the wires and we all waited, hearing the death toll climb higher and higher. The violence shocked some of the most popular Kenyan bloggers into a stunned silence, as we called each other just to see if we were okay.

My best friend stuck on campus relied on food from neighbors as she was marooned amidst the crowds going to and from on Mbagathi way, another friend stayed on Baraton’s campus, locked down. All of the people I got a hold of were physically unhurt. A family I know fled their home near Kibera, and came back to find it occupied. It was not about these elections any more in some areas, the people felt so deceived that they remembered all the past hurts, when forcible resettlement had occurred, when the perceived differences between people came to light. And then the ID checks, and then the harassment and the killing.

The most striking images were when pictures of little babies were posted online, and a burn victim lay exposed in a picture on the front page cover of ABC’s website. Could they not sell their news less gorily? I thought. And then I got angry. The people around me mostly meant well. But again, many said ‘those poor poor people’, ‘i pity them’ and went about their daily lives. They could continue with festivities, but I certainly could not. Why was this happening to my country? When was this going to end? How were we ever going to get past this. Did Kenyans really hate one another this much? I was sure that the end of the world had arrived. It was that striking to me. Words were not enough. A Rwandese friend, whose family fled the violence sent her commiserations, and I realized that we were living the African nightmare, when a country experiences instability and starts to unravel, slowly.

My write-up comes a little late in the game, but I hope that we can learn from our neighbors conflict and find peace. The real problem is how to remove this cancer called counter-democracy, when the politicians decide that what they want is to stay in power at all costs. Today, I heard thatKibaki went to see the humanitarian areas. The date is the ninth of January, we are only just getting back to some sanity. Thanks for stopping by, you are days and days late.