Journalists are not the Only Culprits in Kenya

May 3 was International Press Freedom Day. Journalists make their living by poking their noses into other people’s affairs, but are not very good at looking at themselves, their institutions, their own practice and how they advance or hinder the values of freedom of expression that their profession is built on. I was at the Goethe Institute in the city of Nairobi to hear journalists celebrate the day and talk about the various challenges facing the media in Kenya. A very interesting documentary film ‘Uncovering Kenya’s Media’ produced by one of Kenya’s veteran Pan Africanist photojournalists, Khamis Ramadan. The film looked at the unsung contributions of photo journalists. In general African journalists are badly paid and ill treated by their employers, governments and the wider society. But photojournalists are even more badly treated because media houses and the wider society do not recognise their real value. In Africa they are still seen as poor cousins of the ‘mainstream’. Yet in this age of multimedia, the image is increasingly more important than the written word.
Read more;http://www.justiceafrica.org/blog/2008/05/08/journalists-are-not-the-only-culprits-in-kenya/