Friday, May 20, 2011

Keep It Real and Keep It Balanced

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Share/Save/Bookmark LAST week, in a curious move, the Star published an article attacking Miguna Miguna, one of the paper’s regular columnists and recently voted one of readers’ top two favourites. How odd is that?
I found the article (by Public Editor Karen Rothmyer) inaccurate on some counts and unbalanced on others, intentionally or otherwise. I found it unacceptably unequal in the treatment of its subject – ‘Miguna and his critics’ – and I will tell you why.
But first I need to say that I know Miguna and I have worked with him. I have found him intelligent, well-read, well-prepared, honest, stalwart, upright, hardworking and supremely committed to what is good, proper, right and just. I also know he is impatient and highly vocal about anything that contravenes these values, and that he does not suffer fools gladly. About his style of operation (never the substance), he and I have in the past had rather lively discussions. But I have learned to respect Miguna.
He is one of the few people I know who actually reads complex legal and constitutional documents, when others are just too idle or too incompetent to put in the hard work required. Miguna patiently winkles out the loopholes otherwise overlooked, and bravely stands his ground against the inevitable attacks.
It is a lonely position, and Miguna might not always be diplomatic. But diplomacy isn’t everything. If things go well for us in this country, Kenyans will owe Miguna more than they know.
Little wonder, then, that Miguna strikes back to defend himself when people deliberately try to downgrade his work with cheap shots vilifying him as a person.
Ms Rothmyer begins her article by stating that complaints about Miguna are not uncommon. The corresponding fact that Miguna was voted a reader favourite is buried somewhere three columns later – while mention of any complaint at all about the vile propaganda spewed out by that PNU critic of Miguna (and everything else ODM), Peter Kagwanja, is absent.
Accuracy soon takes a tumble too. To balance her opener about these complaints, Rothmyer says Miguna, in turn, has now complained about “readers”.
Miguna has never complained about readers. Let’s get the facts right.
Miguna complained to the Star that it had allowed its website to host, at the end of one of his articles, negative comments about him, repasted from elsewhere in a choreographed hate campaign. The Star subsequently removed what Rothmyer concedes were “gratuitously nasty postings”. That’s after her remark three paragraphs earlier that they “didn’t strike me as particularly abusive”. (Ah, accuracy and consistency! Doncha love it?)
Rothmyer goes on to say Miguna’s own “attacks on well-known figures and his efforts to impress” are over the top. Eye-rolling stuff, she says patronisingly. I wonder if she ever finds Kagwanja’s articles over the top? Moses Kuria’s, perhaps? No?
How do you publish someone’s work and then, in print, criticise him for your own editorial decisions? Last time I looked, editors had a role in newspaper production. Either publish and be damned, and stand by your writers, or send the story back. Otherwise, I think it’s called passing the buck. Pusillanimously.
Rothmyer’s premise all through is that Miguna is the attacker. Yet Miguna, in the article that seems to have triggered all this, one where he dressed down Kagwanja , was responding to an attack by Kagwanja.
According to Rothmyer, Miguna “demanded” the right of reply. Note the lexical choice, “demanded”, making Miguna look aggressive. But right of reply is just that, a recognised right.
Is Miguna supposed to be called a charlatan (the last thing he is), to be compared to murderers, called a tailless dog, and not respond? Apparently. While whatever vicious libel flows from Kagwanja’s fingertips escapes censure or even comment. Rothmyer also says, completely erroneously, that Miguna had an “exchange” with Moses Kuria. Wrong. Miguna has never mentioned him.
On it goes. And Rothmyer’s conclusion, halfway through the article (rather than at the end, as is customary) is that she blames Miguna. This is because, some time ago, he and Gitobu Imanyara co-authored a piece that compared William Ruto to the German Joseph Goebbels in his role as a propagandist spreading lies for ignoble ends.
Firstly, that article was a high-class piece of writing that the Star was lucky to have. Secondly, Goebbels had a genius for propaganda; Ruto seems to have some talent there too. A lot of what Ruto says, particularly about Raila Odinga, is untrue. Ruto knows this. And having worked with Ruto, I know he knows it. Ruto might have some way to go but the comparison was not unjustified.
Finally, something that leaves a rather nasty taste. Rothmyer mentions a phone call criticising Miguna from someone “who described himself as coming from the same ethnic group”. What is that supposed to mean? That because they belong to the same tribe the criticism is more valid? What an unfortunate argument. Miguna has never mentioned his ethnic group, or anyone else’s. This was something Rothmyer should have kept to herself. We don’t need tribalism, overt or covert, to inflame things further.
There is need for everyone to be a bit more subtle, perhaps, whether Miguna or any other writer and not excluding the Public Editor. Miguna will no doubt remain provocative, as Rothmyer calls it. Yes, m’am. And that’s what helps sell your newspaper.

Sarah Elderkin is a freelance journalist

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