The Accountability Ecosystem in Kenya Today

Pressures and incentives

Across all mediums, most media companies have struggled to find appropriate business models within a changing economic and technological environment. As a consequence, leading companies have radically downsized, starting in late 2015, with the onset of digital television. The Nation Media Group, for instance, closed two radio stations (opting instead for an online stream) and merged two television stations. Most establishment media companies have gone through several rounds of layoffs. In late 2017 and early 2018, both The Nation Media Group and The Standard announced another round of substantial layoffs.

Declining revenue limits journalists’ capacity

The profession as a whole in Kenya has suffered a noticeable decline, due to the economic pressures and government attacks.

With financial troubles fundamentally changing newsrooms, respondents were eager to identify new, sustainable funding streams and models. Like media companies around the world, Kenyan media are still struggling to monetize online audiences and make up for lost ad revenue. Commercial advertisers have started to move their money to online ad services such as Google Adwords. At the same time, establishment media have had to contend with a drastic decline in government ad revenue. The government has reportedly ordered government departments to only advertise in the government’s MyGov publication. AFP reported that the government had been spending upwards of USD 19 million a year on private advertising, which the establishment media stand to lose. At the same, the government has allegedly failed to pay debts of almost USD 10 million to Kenyan media houses for advertising it had already run. In turn, establishment media’s profitability has dropped significantly. In 2016, profits across the industry reportedly shrank by almost USD 15 million. They have since gone through multiple rounds of layoffs of editors and journalists, retrenching hundreds of staff.

Without staff journalists, newsrooms increasingly depend on freelance journalists and correspondents to produce content at a lower cost. In fact, one study found that approximately 80 percent of journalists are employed as correspondents. Correspondents, who typically have contracts to produce a certain number of stories a week, and freelance, paid-per-story journalists receive significantly less payment than staff. They also do not receive benefits and typically have less experience and/or training. Staff journalists, on the other hand, are generally paid a salary, which, as one correspondent for The Standard notes, “allows for more time to work on quality stories.”

In addition to pay, there are other benefits to working as staff journalists. A Standard correspondent noted that working in the newsroom as staff allows “a lot of face time with editors, which helps get stories in the paper.” The implication is that without this face time, it is harder to get the necessary feedback and support to get stories published, which impacts whether correspondents and freelance journalists will be paid at all. This particular Standard correspondent was contracted to produce two stories per day, but tried to produce up to four, because he was unsure what the newspaper would actually print, which then impacted whether he would be paid at all. Payments for a story can range from as low as USD 20 to 1000, depending on the perceived value of the story. Monthly pay for freelancers may be “as little as USD 100 per month.”

However, even in newsrooms, journalists are not receiving the support they need. A culture of mentorship, once an important source of professionalization amongst journalists, has mostly disappeared. In reference to the declining quality of reporting in Kenya, an investigative journalist explained, “a lot of this is because of a lack of mentorship. This is no longer embedded in the culture of news reporting. Before, editors would take time to explain to their staff why a story was good or bad. They would take the time to brief them before they went out to get a story; now, not so much.” He went on to say that, “some of this is because of the level of experience editors have now. While it used to be 10 plus years of experience, now it has gone down to about two or three.”

This shift to low-wage, contract journalism has, in the words of one respondent, resulted in the “juniorisation” of the newsroom. Without resources, mentorship, or professional support, young journalists struggle to produce high quality reporting. In fact, most respondents cited journalistic capacity as one of the biggest challenges to strong independent media. Even journalists themselves acknowledge their own capacity issues. A county-level correspondent said, “As a correspondent, I feel held captive. I have very little opportunity for professional growth. Correspondents are expected to cover county issues but we are not taught how to do so.”

Need for targeted training

Given the well-known capacity gaps of professional journalists and editors, many respondents lamented a lack of hands-on training within the education system. A current media trainer and experienced journalist explained that “many universities offer journalism courses, but they offer theoretical skills and not practical. This is a shortcoming and hindrance of the current crop of journalists being churned out.”

A number of actors are working to fill this gap: The Media Council of Kenya offers trainings, as do some civil society groups. A few international NGOS are providing mentorship and training. However, at least a few respondents referred to journalists as “overtrained,” even though capacity continues to remain an issue. The criticism frequently heard was that these trainings, often referred to as “helicopter trainings,” were seen to be designed based on donor directives, rather than a thorough understanding of journalists’ needs. Media trainers cited instances of journalists failing to complete trainings or applying the new skills they had acquired. Journalists, for instance, who receive training on covering government finance, were not observed actually reporting on related issues.

Women face challenges in newsrooms

For Kenya’s female journalists, the constraints multiply. Although recent data on the percentage of female journalists in Kenya is unavailable, a 2011 study found “women journalists are greatly under-represented in the Kenyan news organizations surveyed, with men outnumbering women more than 2:1. Women’s participation is most noticeably low in governance and middle management levels, as well as in production and design.” Respondents for our research highlighted multiple barriers that include discriminatory hiring practices, widespread sexual harassment in the workplace, and increased risks of online attacks.

Beyond affecting editorial decision-making on the issues covered, this gender imbalance is reflected in the ways stories are told. A 2015 report found men “10 times more likely than women to be a news source actor”, illustrating the lack of representativeness in voices and perspectives that are sought, legitimized, and used.

However, Kenyan communication and journalism schools are flush with aspiring female journalists—in some cases, they outnumber male students. Yet newsrooms remain heavily male-dominated. As one civil society respondent working on gender and media issues noted, “there are lots of female communication or journalism students, but they aren’t going to or staying in the newsroom. There is this prevailing notion that the newsroom is for men.” This lack of female journalists is consistent with 2015 research by the Media Council of Kenya, which examined 912 news articles and found only 7 percent were written by women.

The prevalence of sexual harassment, both within and outside the newsroom, may be one reason preventing female journalists from advancing in their careers. Researchers heard frequent reports of women journalists subjected to sexual harassment in the workplace, some of which have recently been reported on in the Kenyan press. Such harassment is frequently compounded online, mirroring a well-documented, global trend of online harassment toward female journalists. In Kenya, a 2016 survey found 75 percent of female journalists to have experienced digital harassment during the course of their work. Female journalists are also perceived, in some cases, to be judged more harshly than their male colleagues, and face increased risk of public threat and intimidation. One respondent cited an example of a female sports announcer who is regularly subjected to fierce online attacks, most notably when her predictions are wrong.

Yet Kenya’s female journalists continue to work to overcome these barriers, even as these forces narrow the critical pipeline of their rise through media ranks.