Press freedom in Kenya: Precarious at best

Kenya is home to more than 200 community radio stations, more than a hundred newspapers and magazines as well as dozens of television stations, in addition to online broadcasts and blogs. Journalists in the country are highly educated, according to the Media Council of Kenya. Yet, it ranks 102 out of 180 countries in this year's World Press Freedom Index.

Attack on DW correspondent in Nairobi

While the increase of those numbers in Kenya's media landscape is a welcome sight, the situation of press freedom in Kenya remains precarious.

A DW correspondent was recently attacked by police forces while reporting from a coronavirus demonstration in Nairobi. She was hit by two tear gas canisters during a demonstration against the state Corona measures in Nairobi on Saturday. One canister hit her in the calf, the second one in the thigh. DW Director General Peter Limbourg has since issued a letter to Kenyan authorities demanding an explanation.

"Such police behavior against the media cannot go without consequences. The freedom of the press has to be guaranteed under all circumstances. Your active contribution to achieving this is called for more than ever as today we are marking World Press Freedom Day," Limbourg wrote in his letter.

Human rights organization Amnesty International also called on Kenyan authoritiesto investigate the incident.

Women journalists need to be 'very tough'

Thirty years after the Windhoek Declaration of May 3, 1991, the safety of journalists remains a daunting challenge, according to the congress of African journalists (CAJ) report. Female journalists remain vulnerable to gender-based violence, sexual and verbal harassment, as well as online abuse.  

Well-known Kenyan radio presenter Nasra Said Mkali said that female journalists have to be very tough in the field of journalism to fulfill their dreams without being misused and abused.

According to the radio host, women in Africa are often seen as the 'weaker sex' that isn't supposed to work in the media, a societal and cultural prejudice that poses a challenge to women journalists.

"Every gender can work in every field, the community should not sideline females in certain types of jobs. I call on the authorities to deal with the harassment of women. Our colleagues need to respect women and draw boundaries in the work space," explained Nasra.  

The head of programs at the Media Council of Kenya, Victor Bwire, said that despite journalists in Kenya doing "tremendous work of the watchdog role to the government and non-government institutions," they are not paid accordingly.

"The issue of welfare and salary of journalists needs to be examined thoroughly. In RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index, Kenya has been ranked 102, which is even below Ethiopia in terms of journalist salaries. This is scary and we need to do something about it," said Bwire.  

Journalist Sophia Saidun is now working as a civil servant after quitting the media industry in Kenya, explaining that media employers often do not value their employees. Many journalists work as volunteers for their respective media organizations and only receive a small amount of money. When they ask for a fair salary, they are threatened to be replaced by other journalists who are ready to take peanuts as payment — without any formal employment contracts.  

Saidun is no exception, according to Warda Ahmed, a senior journalist in a radio station on the coast of Kenya: Sauti ya Pwani. Many young talented journalists in the media end up quitting the profession because they cannot sustain their life in the media, Ahmed said. Some of the government officials gag the media by prohibiting journalists to cover certain topics, according to the journalist.

A review of media laws in Kenya?

"Recently, Education Minister Prof. George Magoha issued a media statement that journalists should not cover the national exams [school-leaving exams, Ed.], we should only cover the exams through press statements given by the ministry itself. This is infringing media freedom, they don’t respect us like they respect other professions," Ahmed told DW.

In commemorating World Press Freedom Day, the media council of Kenya is calling for a review of different policies and laws in order to guarantee media freedom. To this day, those laws are affecting and restricting journalistic work and can even lead to self-censorship as journalists fear being punished for going about their job.

"Stakeholders have raised the issue of urgency to amend the KBC Act, Public Order Act, Books and Newspaper Act and Computer Cyber Crime Act," said Bwire.

Oloo Janak, chairman of The Kenya Correspondent Association (KCA), said that in the past year, 55 journalists in Kenya have gone through different insecurity issues and some have been killed. Janak has called on the government to be more vigilant and help journalists to work in a safe environment.

"We need justice for the many journalists who have been killed and hurt in their line of duty," said Janak. "We as stakeholders are urging the journalists to continue with their work as we continue to lobby for safer grounds for them."

Faiz Musa Abdallah is a correspondent in Mombasa, Kenya for DW's Kiswahili Service.