KENYA BROADCAST MEDIA MOVING FROM AUTHORITARIANISM TO LIBERTARIANISM

There are different media systems across the world today and theses systems are formed based on the country and its political system. McQuail (2005) describes the media system as:

 “the actual set of mass media in a given national society, characterized by such main dimensions as scale and centralization, degree of politicization, diversity profile, sources of finance and degree of public regulation and control”. Each system is also characterized by certain organizing principles expressed in what Merrill and Lowenstein (1979) call a “philosophy” of the press system as well as in a set of normative goals the system is intended to pursue. These, in turn, reflect the given society’s general circumstances and its view of the media, resulting in its media policy. Media system change results from changes in both these cultural (cognitive, conceptual) and structural (policy, economic, institutional etc.) factors”

Today I will carefully analyse the broadcast media system, major media policy and the prevalent media theory in Kenya, will equally examine the movement from authoritarianism to libertarianism in Kenya’s broadcast media. And will further study how external forces (i.e. foreign organizations) have influenced, shaped and impacted on Kenya’s broadcast media. 

It is not surprising that the Kenya media industry is going through a revolution and becoming a centre of attraction for other international media corporation. Over the years, through the colonial to post-colonial era, Kenya has gone through various political reforms which also has a great deal of impact on its media systems. In this regard, it will be necessary to briefly state how the broadcast media in Kenya has evolved over the years.

In 1963, Kenya gained its independence from Britain but still remained a de facto one party state beneath the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party till 1992, during which the party President Daniel Arap Moi repealed Section 2A of the constitution that made the one-party politics mandatory. (Maina, 2006) The Kenyan economy and media environment over the past 20 years has become liberalized through the help of the multi-party politics. In spite of the improvements in the freedom and development of the media, through the new constitution and vivacious media sector of various competing print, radio and television news groups, the unique history of Kenya’s colonialism, authoritarianism, post-independence political competitions, and following economic and political liberalization has resulted in a harmful effect on the pace and depth of the development of the mass media (Mbeke, 2008).  Therefor the media evolution in Kenya, as well as its success and failures can possibly be ascribed to the nation’s political, colonial, economic and cultural heritage.

 According to McChesney (1998), “in order to understand the media situation of any nation, it is important to first understand the local and national media…” (McChesney, R. 1998 in Thussu). Even though the media in Kenya is seen as part of the most respected and thriving systems in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Freedom House estimate, it still ranked “partly free”. The anti-media laws in Kenya are very strong, most of which weakens the freedom of the media because they are mostly retrogressive, repressive and punitive. This means that despite its appearance as being libertarian the system is still quite authoritative and the media theory that best describes the media system in Kenya is the Authoritarian theory which according to Siebert, F.S et al (1956) describes a system in which the press is the servant of the state who is responsible for most of its content for the benefit of the figures in power at any time. He stated further that this concept has been originally adopted by most national press systems across the world and is still persistent and is still being practiced in some part of the world like the non-Communist nations despite the fact that they have adopted another theory in word or deed (pg.3) Which is the same situation obtainable in Kenya as well.

One major media policy noticeable in Kenya’s broadcast media is that of media regulation policy which is mainly vested in the hands of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation. The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation has encountered numerous challenges over the years from the introduction of the framing of the Kenya Broadcasting Act. Instead of making KBC a public broadcaster as expected, it was made the state broadcaster by law. KBC is now mandated to operate the radio and Television stations throughout the country. The KBC was established under a weak and inadequate legal frame work and has thus been faced with severe political, financial and administrative constraints. The so called ‘liberalised market’ is not a system in which KBC can be adequately guided by the law. KBC is empowered to perform the role of a licensing authority by the Section 21 of the Act and to also levy  the owners and dealers in TV and radio to help finance its operations. This permission was however revoked in June 2003 by the minister of information and communication which subsequently reduced the financial capability of KBC, considering that it had to compete with the liberalized market for adverts. The government still has much control over the KBC and interferes in it. 

The president is given too much power via the law, he appoints the chairman, and the information and communication minister assigns the board of directors which means the board is not independent. Though section 8 of KBC’s Act provides that the cooperation will be impartial, independent, balanced and fair in its coverage, this has been far from it since the country’s independence. KBC serves as a tool of the government rather than being a public broadcaster and it lost most of its public credibility due to the absence of fair and balanced coverage’s of issues since the beginning of the 80’s (Oriare, P. et al.2010:19-20) this goes further to support the claim of the system as being authoritarian.

The government (under the Moi’s administration) was however, not interested in the foreign press. It stopped the local media from publishing news from wire services and deported foreign correspondents (Mshindi, 2008). When the multi-party politics began in 1992, the scope of political and press freedom expanded. This period saw the continuous expansion of aid flow. Kenya’s need for developmental assistance tripled within 1978 and 1990. The aid program was quickly increased by the United States by the 1980’s which consequently made Kenya the largest recipient of U.S and the Sub-Saharan Africa total aid by 1990.

The Kenya broadcasting has expanded since the liberalization of the economy, the work of the KANU party seems to have been more significant in this aspect and this development resulted into the introduction of the policy on ownership. Newspaper companies like The Nation and The Standard also established their own broadcasting.  Kenya media has been moving gradually towards monopoly and the concentration of ownership in the hand of a few and producing duplicative and biased content. Most media owners make profit from ‘convergence of ownership’ and have keenly opposed government suggestions to limit cross ownership (Mbeke, Ugangu, and Okello-Oriale, 2010). In an environment like this, where the media ownership structure is being shaped by just a few players, is strengthening the barriers to market entry in the media sector; key media houses are employing different methods such as interference with licensing procedure to the monopolization of adverts and network distribution. That notwithstanding, there has been beneficial effects of the entrance of a big regional player on the standard of journalism. Till date there has been a failed attempt to regulate the media ownership and evidence in the impact of powerful media players on the climate of politics. This can be best illustrated by the Kenya Communication Act of 2008.

 It is important to note that there is no specific media regulatory policy in Kenya. Its policies are made through different laws, documents and reports in ministries and semi-autonomous government agencies (SAGAs). Therefore, the key policy tools in Kenya are the Kenya Communications Act (1998), the Media Act (2007), and the proposed ICT Policy (2008) and ICT Strategy (2008). The most influential document regarding Kenyan media is the Kenyan Communications Act (KCA) 1998 (2009, as amended), which repealed previous legislation and unbundled the Kenya Post and Telecommunications Corporation into five separate entities. Also there are currently no provisions for the regulation of independent media, no public service mandate, similarly the private broadcasters have no public service broadcasting remit quota this private broadcast tend to be biased through the absence of an effective regulatory device in terms of cross-media ownership (Oriare, Okello-Orare, & Ugangu, 2010).

Kenya is ranked amongst the top 20 recipient of bilateral, multilateral governmental and non-governmental aid, receiving 1.275 billion dollars on an annual basis. The top two contributors to the country are the United States and United Kingdom. The Department for International Development (DFID), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and USAID, including other industrialized economies frequently condition development assistance on political rhetoric. The main goals stated by these organizations are democratization, good governance and transparency. There has been a tremendous expansion of the aids from China since 2004, which is very much different from the aids of the United States and U.K considering that China’s aim is not for democratisation or liberalization and has just a few political criteria to its funding. The World Bank and IMF are top multilateral donors and Kenya was the first sub-Saharan African country the World Bank gave a sub structural adjustment lending and first to get an Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) loan from the IMF (were, 2008). The most active governmental, regional and international donors are the United Nation, European Union, and the East African Community, their developmental assistance has to do with media development. The important non-governmental organizations that contribute to the health of the media directly or indirectly are: world vision, Christian Children’s Fund, the Ford Foundation and Oxfam.

In all, we see a clear situation where the broadcast media in Kenya which began as an authoritarian media, established, owned and controlled by the government began to transit towards libertarianism. There are traces of authoritarianism captured on the policy of regulation as vested on KBC. Again, there is a clear manifestation of Libertarianism captured in the policy of ownership. This movement is made possible or necessitated by some key factors that affected the socio political and economic development of Kenya. And these also contributed to the reshaping of the broadcast media in Kenya. As a way of remedying this socio political and economic situation, foreign nations and organisations (international forces) where allowed to provide aids, which of course where given alongside foreign media policies. These foreign media policies greatly reshaped and induced the Kenya broadcast media, hence its movement from authoritarianism to libertarianism though, the broadcast media system in Kenya is still characterised by authoritarianism, it is envisaged that with the continual influx of foreign aid in terms of finance and technology the Kenya media will be characterized by libertarianism in the nearest future.