During this period, the content of parts of the media channels was noted to be biased (Simiyu, 2013). Given the prevailing political climate and the emerging concentration of media ownership, the overriding question is whether it was plausible to allow the media to play the main watchdog role in coverage of Kenya's 2013 general election. Determine journalists' perceptions of the influence of media ownership on journalistic dependency in Kenya.
Determine public perceptions of journalistic independence in Kenya during coverage of the 2013 Kenyan general election. The Media Ownership Theory, on the other hand, posits that owners of a media organization have final power over the news content of the newspapers. By substantiating both the media ownership theory and the propaganda model, Parenti (1997) argues that the errors of the media cannot all be innocent in nature.
However, some guidelines in the aforementioned document regarding hate speech and incitement are ambiguous. Gans (1979) believes that the middle-class position of the journalistic profession is a guarantee of their subordination to the capitalist system. Baker (2007), however, focuses on the fact that media concentration will bring unequal democratic power to large corporations that own many media houses.
In short, the interests of media producers should not intersect with the interests (or at least the ideals) of consumers.
Media Ownership, Concentration and Political Patronage in Kenya
Tribune, referred to the modern press as "no longer an institution devoted to the public interest, but a business run solely in the interest of the highest possible level of profit" (as cited in Miller, 1998, p. 21). Kuypers (2002) asserts that the media demonstrate an easy willingness to advance their principles regarding appropriate public policy (as cited in Miller, 1998, p. 202). Kuypers (2002) believes that the whole purpose of mass media is to use frames through the use of "certain key words, metaphors, concepts and symbols" (p. 199) which work together to create the connection of one issue over another. .
Kass FM, a station blamed for inciting violence in the 2007 post-election chaos, is alleged to have (by the time of this research) sold 49 percent of its shares to William Ruto. The latter is also affiliated with Chamge FM, a radio station that broadcasts to a predominantly Kalenjin audience in Kenya's sprawling Rift Valley region. Charity Ngilu, a former cabinet minister and one of Uhuru Kenyatta's allies has also bought Mbaitu FM/SioKimau, a Kamba FM station broadcasting in upper eastern Kenya.
These include Najib Balala who bought Sheki FM and Pilipili FM which broadcast in the coastal town of Mombasa. Othieno goes on to say that it is not surprising that NMG supported Kibaki's re-election bid and his Party of National Unity (PNU) in 2007 because in reality an NMG director was at the heart of the PNU campaign effort. This is supported by findings by Ipsos-Synovate which says that Kenya's daily print readership stands at slightly over 3 million, while the weekend figure is slightly over 6 million.
A common threshold for declaring a highly concentrated industry is if the top four companies control 50% or more of the industry's revenue. Therefore, this research will examine media concentration in newspapers, free TV and radio. Using the concentration level ratio for the top four companies (CR4), only in relation to the percentage of sales, showed that the percentage of the top two and four newspapers was 81.2%.
From the above, there is no doubt that the Kenyan media market is highly concentrated. The over-the-air TV market is also highly concentrated in terms of viewership. Some of the provisions in these key policy instruments are antithetical to media freedom.
Research Methodology
This is the period just before and after the elections, when the memory of media coverage was fresher in people's minds. In another study, journalists working for major media houses in Kenya were interviewed to determine whether there was a plausible link between media house ownership and apparent bias in news content.
Findings
The findings indicate that 74 percent of respondents were generally dissatisfied with the media performance of the 2013 general election, while 21 percent of them were generally satisfied. The remaining 2% of respondents felt that none of the above media was satisfactory in their coverage of the election. The research also sought to examine the perception of the public's trust and confidence in the performance of the publicly owned/state radio and TV stations.
Public trust in private TV and radio stations in reporting the 2013 election. Regarding the public's assessment of the performance of the print media in reporting the election, more than half of the respondents believed that the performance of the print media was worse. The majority of respondents believed that journalists did not enjoy adequate freedom of the press while reporting on the 2013 elections.
When asked to rate the perception of bias in the media's handling of the election, 63% of respondents believed that there was the presence of bias. The research then sought to discover the source of bias in the coverage of the election. 23% of respondents identified irresponsible journalism as the cause of bias in news and other reports during the 2013 general election.
On the question of public confidence in the performance of the media in the 2013 general election in Kenya, respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they believe the media in Kenya investigated the results of the election as announced by the IEBC. In this regard, this research asked the following question: To what extent do you agree that citizen journalism played a positive role in the coverage of the 2013 parliamentary elections in Kenya. The results show that the majority of respondents agreed that the new media/citizen journalism played a positive role in the coverage of the 2013 parliamentary elections in Kenya.
78% of respondents agreed that the new media were instrumental in the coverage of the 2013 election. Only 33% of respondents disagreed, while only 1% neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement. When asked (q.3) whether the owners of their respective media organizations had influence over the editorial content during the coverage of the 2013 general election in Kenya, more than half of the respondents (51%) agreed that media owners had influence on the editorial content in coverage of.
53% of the respondents think that the editorial shift was big, while 45% think that there was no editorial shift. The findings show that only 19 percent of respondents rate the performance of MCK as high.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The fact that 59 percent of respondents rate MCK's performance as low may be an indication of MCK's inability as a media regulator to act independently. This is troubling when it comes to the regulation of the quality of journalism in Kenya. These journalists believe that much of the perceived bias and partisanship is largely due to the concentration of media ownership and often an overbearing government.
This observation reflects Chomsky and Herman's (1988) argument that news coverage tends not to question information from the government. The first recommendation is the need to provide clear guidelines for monitoring hate speech and incitement in Kenya's electronic and print media. The guidelines as currently drafted are vague and thus provide a potential ground for a dominant political regime to further restrict journalistic freedom.
Second, there is a need for the government to put in place a range of appropriate regulatory measures to address distortions in particular markets to guard against unhealthy trends in media ownership that could ultimately stifle the diversity of viewpoints in news coverage. Fourth, there is a clear need to promote citizen journalism in order to expand the diversity of information choices for the public. Finally, it is imperative that public institutes conduct an audit of MCK's conduct in the period leading up to and during the 2013 general elections.
More importantly, there is a need to revise the media law in order to create a more effective framework for the operation of the MCK. MCK needs to get government funding with no obligation to become independent from the huge MOA. Media Ownership: The Economics and Politics of Convergence and Concentration in British and European Media.
The role of the mass media in the 2007 election and post-election violence in Kenya.
