Let’s get things straight !

By Gab Oguda

Let’s get things straight.

Everyone knows how William Ruto primitively acquired his ballooning wealth at such a meteoric speed. It is the subject of every dinner table chat in this country, by peasants and aristocrats alike. Down there in my village, we have a long-running rule that if you have proof that someone is a witch and you keep entertaining his presence, instead of bringing him to justice, then you are the problem and not him.

I refuse to go discuss things that are already in the public domain. School children have been burning their buildings since 1906 and the Kenyan government has been setting up taskforces to look into the same, the latest commission of inquiry into school fires was constituted last year and there is a report to that effect.

You know what you people.

We cannot be wasting television space entertaining guests who shall come to the same set to say the same things experts have been saying since 1906. I don’t think any Kenyan of sound mind would want to waste their time watching people regurgitate points that have already been made by more qualified, and legally constituted, persons. Unless there is a new scientific research that adds onto the body of knowledge on that subject, my honest opinion is that it is needless to host a show on this thing every time it occurs.

If I was the president of this country, I would make it compulsory for every licenced media house to have a fully-fledged research department full with a state-of-the-art library, and a media training school. Journalisms exists to do three things; inform, educate and entertain.

For you to inform and educate, you have to stop relying on quacks coming into your shows with a pre-set political agenda, there has to be a difference between Mathogothanio Jubilee Youths For Uhuru Facebook Page and those political shows you have on television every night. For you to inform and educate the public, you have to have journalists who are trained on the things they’re hired to do, adhering to the journalism code of ethics, and not urban socialites competing with lingerie models for publicity. For you to inform and educate the public, you have to go through those previous reports from the respective Commissions of Inquiry, be the public watchdog on this matter as is required of you, and ask the government why those recommendations are gathering dust one hundred years on.

You will not substitute your watchdog role with footloose urban wanderers moving from one television station to another masquerading as policy experts knowledgeable on all things under the sun, from what causes acne to why the egg is oval. If you want an expert opinion on missing numbers in our annual budget, the best person to speak to is a representative from the professional body dealing with accountants, and not a Jubilee heckler who is probably your beer buddy. And so on and so forth.

This wasn’t supposed to be a lecture. I’m just reminding people who have been given jobs to do them, and do them well. We already have too many opinion on every matter under this sun. The role of the media is to sieve the noisy chaff from the silent wheat.

And bring sanity back to our living rooms.