African Media Barometer Kenya

The Kenyan African Media Barometer panel discussion took place in March 2012. The discussion revealed that Kenyans celebrated the promulgation of their new Constitution as an instrument that would bring significant change to the social, economic and political landscape of the country. The constitution guarantees freedom of expression, media freedom and access to public information. However, public information is still inaccessible to the media and the wider public. There are on-going discussions to align the Media Act and Independent Communication Bill of Kenya to the new Constitution, and the draft Freedom of Information (FOI) Act that has been ready for many years is still to be tabled in parliament.

Print media products have increased in diversity and range, yet, they are considered too pricey therefore vendors ted to rent out daily newspapers for one or two hours. However, this positive interest in media is marred by the increase in the level of corruption within the media sector, such as bribing journalists and editors which is such a common practice that has been coined as “grassroots editing”. On the issue of gender balanced representation, woman voices have little space in the media. The relationship between different ethnic groups is still fragile thus journalists practise a great deal of self-censorship in the manner in which they report issues affecting different communities.