Let Kenyan Media regulate itself

By Francis Mureithi
Why do our rulers always want to boss us about? It's time to stand up and start causing trouble!!
No week goes by without some new initiative to restrain the freedoms or rights of a particular group.
One ignores these individually because there are better, more amusing things to think about.
But taken as whole, the actions of our government regarding the Freedom of the Press are extremely worrying, the more so perhaps because we do so little to resist them.
Take for example the controversial Media Bill, the brain child of Information and Communication minister Mutahi Kagwe.
This was a Bill well crafted to gag the media in Kenya. Compelling editors to reveal their sources of stories in case of litigation is a direct bullet aimed at killing investigative journalism.
And were it not for the lobbying against the Bill, President Mwai Kibaki would have signed it into law.
Justice and constitutional affairs minister Martha Karua, in her abrasive way, was for it by hook or crook.
This is the case with information minister, ironically who once served as a media practitioner. What would have prevented the President from appending his signature if not the protest by media practitioners, civil society, the church, members of the public and other institutions?
The August 15 peaceful demo by Journalists from all Media Houses in the country’s capital Nairobi and Nakuru was a bold step, that put a strong message that Freedom of the Press is there to stay.
And when we do not join hands in restraining those in power from gagging the powerless, the blame is squarely ours.
Now, Attorney General Amos Wako has said he will advise the head of state to return the Bill back to the House for amendment of the contentious clause.
But what the media practitioners should fight for is pure expunge of this Draconian Law. Let the media work on self regulation instead of us being regulated by others.