BBI report long on accountability but short on role of the media

Journalists cover a press conference at Cotu head offices in Nairobi on September 24, 2020 as the trade union’s Secretary General, Francis Atwoli, speaks.

File | Nation Media Group

By  Peter Mwaura

Nation Media Group's public editor.

What you need to know:

• One of the things the media can do to foster good governance is to provide surveillance — that is, the watchdog function of the media — which the State media can hardly do.
• Without the non-State media, the BBI focus on good governance will remain a voice crying in the wilderness.

The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report has placed considerable focus on governance. It is replete with key words used in good governance debate — such as accountable, accountability, transparent, transparently, transparency, trust, public trust and public participation.

The report is also hefty. It is over 60,000 words long, more than twice the length of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind. The comparison to Ngugi’s book is not far-fetched; it spends not inconsiderable time talking about decolonising our minds.

“The BBI Task Force report revealed a widespread lament of our lack of trust for one another and our public institutions,” it says, referring to the initial BBI report.

“The validation process sustained this sense of an identity crisis, which the Steering Committee has come to firmly believe is a key target for policymaking. We cannot build a nation of shared ideals unless we have a shared understanding of what uniquely defines us as Kenyans — the good and the bad.”

The report says our stories and diverse heritage, candidly told by Kenyans, should define our national identity: “It is only by embracing our unique experiences, traditional and emerging cultures, that we shall decolonise our minds and become a confident nation.”

Governance issue

But it is in the manifestation of the governance issue that the report has excelled itself. In its implementation mechanisms and administrative measures recommendations, it has placed a lot of weight on good governance, even proposing a bill on public participation “to provide an effective public participation framework both at the national and county government levels.”

The report states matter-of-factly in the executive summary: “The quest to improve governance and to meet the just expectations of the Kenyan people is perpetual.”

In “Section 4: Implementation Mechanisms”, it further states: “Having listened to broad categories of Kenyans during the validation exercise and expert consultations, the Steering Committee was particularly struck by the sense of frustration among Kenyans due to non-responsive public systems and structures: A situation which, in turn, created a worrying deficit of public trust in government.

“For this reason, considerable focus was put on transforming systems and structures within our governance set-up and making them compliant with a ‘people-first’ approach in public governance.”

The report, however, is long on accountability and short on the role the media can play in helping to cultivate, promote and socialise a culture of good governance. Focusing only on systems and structures, as the report does, is not enough.

Bad governance

It does not, even for a moment, consider the role the media can play as a partner in the fight against bad governance.

Sure, the report mentions the media (and TV) 12 times. But it is mainly in connection with a “national 24-hour free-to-air TV station” that it recommends to be set up to “showcase our tourism, county attractions, etc.,” like Tanzania does.

The report also calls for revamping KBC to make it competitive, attractive and profitable and to reduce or mitigate political interference in the running of the State station.

It has no word on the role of the non-State media, which has considerable sway on agenda-setting and what people think about of the government, in solving the governance issue.

One of the things the media can do to foster good governance is to provide surveillance — that is, the watchdog function of the media — which the State media can hardly do.

The non-State media can create awareness, critical in exposing the issues and instances of bad governance, and also promote good behaviour and norms in governance. 

Without the non-State media, the BBI focus on good governance will remain a voice crying in the wilderness.

The Public Editor is an independent news ombudsman who handles readers’ complaints on editorial matters including accuracy and journalistic standards.