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Journalists at a past event. [File, Standard]
Kenyans discard what no longer serves them with remarkable ease. We have buried courtship rituals our grandfathers swore by, swapped the payment mode in public service vehicles with mobile payment, and watched marriage customs that once took months get compressed into a single weekend ceremony.
Yet, despite evolutionary changes everywhere, journalism remains shackled to instruments forged for a Kenya that no longer exists. Newspaper publishers still answer to the Books and Newspapers Act, a 1960 colonial relic demanding publishers post a bond before they may print a single copy, as though a newsroom were a bar applying for a liquor licence. The Official Secrets Act of 1968 still hangs over any journalist who asks a civil servant a tough question, carrying a sentence of up to 14 years and offering no defence even when the disclosure serves the public good.
Sections of the Penal Code on sedition and alarming publications, tightened through amendments passed in the 1970s when the state feared little beyond a free press, remain available to any prosecutor looking to silence a story. These laws are, indeed, live ammunition against Kenyan journalists.
