Kenyan journos protest

NAIROBI – Hundreds of journalists wearing black gags marched silently through Kenya’s capital yesterday to protest a proposed law that would allow courts to compel reporters to reveal their sources.

Several radio stations also air music or talk shows instead of morning news broadcasts as part of protests against the bill an international media rights watchdog has described as ‘disastrous’ for democracy. Mitch Odero, a journalist for 30 years in Kenya, said this was the media’s first mass protest.”This has never happened in my lifetime,” said Odero, who once served as editor of The Standard, Kenya’s oldest newspaper.He was among more than 300 journalists who set off from Freedom Corner in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park – a highly symbolic location where protesters seeking multiparty democracy would gather in the early 1990s.”Gagging the media is the first sign of a dictatorship,” said Macharia Gaitho, an editor at The Nation newspaper.He said he was marching not only to protest the bill, but to tell the government that journalists would not tolerate any kind of intimidation.”The media is the voice of society and it cannot be silenced,” he said.The march led to Attorney General Amos Wako’s office, where protesters asked Wako, as the government’s chief legal adviser, to advise President Mwai Kibaki not to sign the proposed law.The crowd then headed toward Parliament.Wako said on Tuesday he would advise Kibaki not to sign the bill and refer it back to the National Assembly ‘for reconsideration’.Four opposition lawmakers are challenging the proposed law in court.”As (journalists) who take it upon ourselves to fight for the rights of others, we simply cannot afford to sit down and do nothing while our own rights and a basic tenet of our profession is at stake,” said a statement signed by a committee of Kenyan journalists.The bill proposes an independent media council to arbitrate complaints against the press, and its decisions would be legally binding.But just before the National Assembly’s final vote more than a week ago, a lawmaker added a clause giving courts powers to force journalists to reveal their sources or unnamed individuals quoted in a story.The lawmaker argued that journalists often defame prominent people by not naming them in stories but describing them enough to allow them to be identified.The secretary-general of the Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard, said the proposed law will have ‘disastrous consequences’ for Kenyan democracy if passed.Menard said forcing journalists to reveal sources would mean ‘a key component of the democratic checks and balances is destroyed’.Journalists using anonymous sources have exposed some of the country’s biggest scandals, such as the Goldenberg affair, when the government was swindled out of millions of dollars for fictitious gold and gem exports during the 1990s.Last year, armed police raided the offices of The Standard and broadcaster KTN, damaging equipment and burning newspapers.Nampa-APMitch Odero, a journalist for 30 years in Kenya, said this was the media’s first mass protest.”This has never happened in my lifetime,” said Odero, who once served as editor of The Standard, Kenya’s oldest newspaper.He was among more than 300 journalists who set off from Freedom Corner in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park – a highly symbolic location where protesters seeking multiparty democracy would gather in the early 1990s.”Gagging the media is the first sign of a dictatorship,” said Macharia Gaitho, an editor at The Nation newspaper.He said he was marching not only to protest the bill, but to tell the government that journalists would not tolerate any kind of intimidation.”The media is the voice of society and it cannot be silenced,” he said.The march led to Attorney General Amos Wako’s office, where protesters asked Wako, as the government’s chief legal adviser, to advise President Mwai Kibaki not to sign the proposed law.The crowd then headed toward Parliament.Wako said on Tuesday he would advise Kibaki not to sign the bill and refer it back to the National Assembly ‘for reconsideration’.Four opposition lawmakers are challenging the proposed law in court.”As (journalists) who take it upon ourselves to fight for the rights of others, we simply cannot afford to sit down and do nothing while our own rights and a basic tenet of our profession is at stake,” said a statement signed by a committee of Kenyan journalists.The bill proposes an independent media council to arbitrate complaints against the press, and its decisions would be legally binding.But just before the National Assembly’s final vote more than a week ago, a lawmaker added a clause giving courts powers to force journalists to reveal their sources or unnamed individuals quoted in a story.The lawmaker argued that journalists often defame prominent people by not naming them in stories but describing them enough to allow them to be identified.The secretary-general of the Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard, said the proposed law will have ‘disastrous consequences’ for Kenyan democracy if passed.Menard said forcing journalists to reveal sources would mean ‘a key component of the democratic checks and balances is destroyed’.Journalists using anonymous sources have exposed some of the country’s biggest scandals, such as the Goldenberg affair, when the government was swindled out of millions of dollars for fictitious gold and gem exports during the 1990s.Last year, armed police raided the offices of The Standard and broadcaster KTN, damaging equipment and burning newspapers.Nampa-AP