Kenyan media owners have been challenged to pay journalists as the number of scribes toiling without salaries keeps rising and threatening the independence of the Fourth Estate.
Failing to pay the brigade that is braving various threats and storms of nature to inform, educate and entertain is a crime against journalists, the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) has warned media houses.
When the world marked the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, David Omwoyo, the MCK chief executive, listed what was threatening press freedom in Kenya.
“People who employ journalists and are unable to pay them, those are crimes against journalists,” said Mr Omwoyo in the presence of the MOA chairperson Agnes Kalekye at an event in Kisumu to mark the day on November 2.
Ms Kalekye had expressed “deepest gratitude” to “brave journalists working tirelessly in challenging circumstances, including going for months without pay to bring us the news that matter.”
She asked journalists to be sticklers for fact-checking and urged media houses, civil society and the government to ensure the scribes are safe, well trained to navigate in the digital age, and offered legal assistance to ensure news reach many people.
As media houses juggle the complexities of the digital age, journalists are faced with the ogres of delayed salaries and falling earnings since many are correspondents who are paid for work done and their retainers are tied to the number of stories published.
This state of affairs has forced correspondents whose pay and retainers are falling fast to lean on news sources that pay them and offer other favours such as support during various forms of distress.
In the past days of ‘brown envelopes’, journalists hid the inducements, but today it is an open secret and scribes use the packages to buy food, pay dowry, plan holidays, and buy homes and cars, be they SUVs or tiny saloons.
Unfortunately, as the correspondents go without pay for months, the editorial top brass are swimming in fat salaries and allowances while mortgaging their positions to favourably interact with bank presidents, politicians, businessmen and traders for training and job opportunities.
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Mr Omwoyo told journalists extorting people in authority and demanding bribes or payment to publish their stories that they were becoming a threat to the profession when news sources erect barriers against genuine journalists looking for information.
“If you are asking for money to run a story, then you have sunk to the level of extortionists,” Mr Omwoyo said, responding to a county administrator who accused journalists of extortion by publishing untruths about them.
Kisumu West senior deputy county commissioner Nalianya Wanyonyi said while journalists had had their share of repressions, administrators were turning “jittery because some journalists are extortionists; they blackmail some of us and write what cannot be substantiated anywhere.”
Mr Omwoyo said: “People who know [what they should be do] but their actions are making the work of journalists difficult are committing crimes against journalists.”
The MCK chief said those mobilising funds to protect journalists but don’t were some of the worst perpetrators of crimes against the toiling scribes. It is unfortunate, the media monitor said, that some people in authority were sponsoring social media campaigns against the media.
