Tabloids hold power to account, teaches important life lessons while ensuring we laugh ourselves to death
By Shifa Mwihaki
Resident Essayist
Political scientist Mutahi Ngunyi started the 5th Estate as a You Tube channel to ventilate his weekly, contrarian political views. He seems to have taken a Sabbatical, but the channel has morphed to include Media Police Post, a Monday to Friday show. It stars a three-anchor panel which analyzes news from the ‘winning headlines’ of mainstream newspapers majorly the Daily Nation, The Standard and the Star, besides the day’s ‘winning cartoon’ using a three tier criteria.
Media Police Post also has a ‘Final Thought’ section where the themed books of the week are fleshed out in analysis mirroring current situations and affairs in Kenya.
One of the panelists, June Jambi also called 2J spews bile mostly against the Star whenever it publishes what she considers ‘tabloid headlines.’ She was particularly incensed with headlines centred on the divorce proceedings between Meru Senator Mithika Linturi and Marianne Kitany, the former Chief of Staff at the Deputy President’s office.
It was lost on Jambi why a newspaper should dwell on people’s private matters, sensationalizing them in headlines like; Mithika was both romantic and cruel and I chewed miraa, Linturi drunk mursik to bind our love. Jambi’s argument are hinged on mainstream broadsheet wasting valuable space helping couples wash their dirty linen in public in the face of more pressing matters like corruption scandals, political intrigues, climate change, rivers of poison and the Uhuru Succession.
In her judgment, it appears, sensational sex scandals should be left to red sheets like The Nairobian, but which begs the question: why does the media often find it necessary to poke its nose in people’s private lives and package it as news? Why open bedrooms to expose who is sleeping naked with who yet important issues like the gaping lack of insurance against enemies are left untouched.
Well, there are many reasons, dear June Jambi, why sex scandals and divorce cases of famous folk like Senator Linturi and Kitany make the news. There is more to it than providing fodder for the gossip pages.
One, the media primarily exits to inform, educate and entertain he masses. Tabloids play their role as media products via providing visceral entertainment through light-hearted sex scandals, exposes of crime, the bizarre and the ridiculous like the story of the man from Kakamega who slashed his balls and turned them into chicken feed.
Media Law makes it legal for the press to expose the private lives of the famous
Tabloids never pretend to pander to any cerebral discourse, or pan to intellectualism, rather they provide powder kegs to humanity’s baser instinct, need for comic relief, feeling good laughing at the misfortunes of others. Whether as American editor and columnist Talia Migrom-Elcott argued in 1997 that “the screaming headlines and conspiratorial accusations and the near voyeuristic exposes of public peoples’ private lives make a mockery of the profession and of the noble possibilities of a free press,” is another matter.
Two, Media Law makes it legal for the press to expose the private lives of the famous, people in the news, public servants, politicians and other public figures. These could be musicians, television anchors, radio presenters, popular Djs, actors, comedians, suspects in the Sh72 million bank heist, pastors, bishops and elected leaders.
While the law protects the privacy of all citizens, the threshold into which the media can poke its nose, is lowered for those in the public eye. By choosing to be famous or taking careers which elevate them into role models means they also chose to have their private lives under public scrutiny. This could be their spouses, business associates, investments and the colour of their underwear, and most importantly, where they bought it.
Why, you might ask, is that important?
People, by their very nature, have a huge innate interest in knowing about other people to primarily satisfy their emotional gratification through escape into the lives of others which are more interesting than their own. Targets are those who are famous, are more beautiful, richer, cleverer, more talented, more blessed. If the moral barometer of the subject is higher, like in the case of pastors, the voyeuristic scrutiny is sharper.
A sex scandal in Prophet David Owuor’s ministry attracts more interest and in large numbers than the intrigues surrounding the shareholding of companies buying into Telkom Kenya-which is a public asset. Exposing fake miracles in Pastor Victor Kanyari’s church is juicier than delving into why Kenya is exporting oil instead of renovating the Changamwe Oil Refinery.
Addiction to tabloids is thus a form of voluntary stupid, but it makes people happy in swapping juicy gossip to while away their sense of ennui. There is also psychological realignments of how the half live-that the rich also cry. Being fed tantalizing nuggets the broadsheets missed or avoided to keep the government and advertisers in jolly spirits, also completes another side of the story-and thus their right to information.
Exposing sex scandals, on the other side of the bed, provides a different kind of surveillance
New York Times Ryan Linkoff notes in his 2011 piece, Why we need the Tabloids, that “they are not an external source of infection, slowly contaminating the mainstream press, but rather an extension, and often an exaggeration, of the basic logic that animates all news reporting.”
But more importantly, media exists to provide surveillance to the public by holding power to account.
It could be verifying whether there was mercury in imported Brazilian sugar to what Raila Odinga was paid in cash and kind to throw the entire Nasa team and six million voters under the bus, and go to bed with the government.
Exposing sex scandals, on the other side of the bed, provides a different kind of surveillance, some with far reaching consequences had it not been exposed in what Jambi terms “people’s private affairs.”
Consider what went down as the ‘Profumo Affair’ in 1960s England.
John Profumo was the Secretary of State for War in the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Though married, Profumo had an affair with 19 year old aspiring Christine Keeler. Nothing wrong with that. But Keeler was also dating Russian spy Captain Eugene Ivanov-at the height of the Cold War.
Hotels were a no-no for Profumo. Keeler had keys to his office where he often joined him for sex sessions. A woman dating a Russian spy was being left in the office littered with maps of naval war ship positions, military memos and minutes of cabinet meetings! The sex scandal exposed England and its people to military attacks and surprise counter moves from Russia.
The sex scandal was exposed after Profumo dumped Keeler two years later. To teach him a lesson, she went to the tabloids and spilled the beans of the State: Profumo ruined his career, Macmillan resigned, the Conservative Party lost in the ensuing elections.
Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen had an affair with Samburu West MP Naisula Lesuuda
Flip the same case to Kenya. What if President Uhuru Kenyatta loves yellow-yellow Somali girls for side chicks? A responsible tabloid would expose the affair considering Kenya is at war with Al Shaabab in Somalia and who can plant a ‘terrorist bride’ for the president like Russia did with Adolf Hitler during World War II.
Sex scandals thus have security implications the masses are oblivious about. There is also abuse of office. Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen had an affair with Samburu West MP Naisula Lesuuda in 2017 when she was a Woman Rep. Their text messages included Murkomen cooing ‘I love you like a Pokot bandit loves his gun’ and in the ensuing affair sex trips abroad would be arranged and per diem paid from our taxes.
The ongoing divorce case between Linturi and Kitany has revealed that she paid for property, houses and foreign holidays in the millions which the salary of a Chief of Staff would not support: Sh36 million for their Runda home, Sh11 million for a holiday to Australia.
Listen to Linkof: “the tabloids may test the limits of the ethically or legally acceptable, but they are often doing so in the service of a popular desire to see behind the facade of public life. They rely on the appeal (a very human one) of seeing elements of our societies that are often shamefully hidden away from view.”
Away from people in the news, tabloids expose love lives out of public interest: Was President Uhuru Kenyatta dating Anne Waiguru when she was Cabinet Secretary for Devolution? This matter had huge public interest considering Uhuru’s fight against corruption at a time when the Devolution Ministry was losing billions in corruption scandals.
The tabloid press in Kenya and gossip blogs and news websites, for instance, have never found it necessarily to write about June Jambi despite her father, Mutahi Ngunyi, being a famous public intellectual. Media Law in Kenya is enshrined in the Constitution. Media is regulated by editorial policy guidelines of individual media houses besides the Media Council of Kenya and thus the beacons of privacy boundaries are well established.
And as Linkof concludes: “the work of the tabloids can be irritating, provocative, ethically questionable and even (as the scandal spectacularly shows) highly illegal, but when practiced according to existing laws, tabloid journalism can be an important player in modern culture, helping to mitigate some of the central tensions in democratic society.”
Note: The editor welcomes essays on topical issues. editor@undercoverafrica.com
