It would be fair to say we live under news media tyranny. We are ruled by it and cannot imagine a world without it. It is the first thing we wake up to in the morning, stay with it all day long, especially in these days of social media, and go to bed with it. I know people who are lulled to sleep by it.
We do not just live with and by it; we have also developed a lot of faith in its ability to give us the correct information.
Indeed, media organisations know our deep faith and total dependency, both of which are deliberately cultivated, and exploit them to their advantage.
Some of the big ones have carefully crafted, over a long time, a reputation of excellence and credibility and are taken to be the ultimate source of reliable news. Even when there is evidence to the contrary.
The faith, too, comes from long-term conditioning of the public to view the media as a paragon of fairness, balance and objectivity, a disinterested messenger of truth.
The reality, however, is a lot more nuanced, reflecting the fact that the media (owners, journalists, and society it’s based) has an agenda beyond informing the public. Sometimes there is a lot more distortion than truth, more bias than balance and more fiction than fact (fake news).
And so we live with this double image of the media: presenting reality as it is, how they wish us to see it, or as they would like it to be. That, of course, does not mean that we have to accept it.
We also place huge expectations on the journalists who give us the news. We expect them to unearth information we would not otherwise get, get to where we cannot go or reach, ask the tough questions, extract answers from unwilling sources, and so on.
We think they are fair-minded and objective, only interested in communicating the truth.
A lot of expectations, and perhaps unrealistic because, as we have come to know, that is not what really happens.
They ask the tough questions alright, some aggressively and without much respect. But they do not always report truthfully, even when they have the facts. They tend to bend, stretch and hammer them to a pre-determined shape and then present that as the truth.
Occasionally, and to the delight of many, some of these journalists meet their match among the people from whom they seek to extract information. They get their answers, not necessarily what they want, and a lot more. This may take different forms: a straight, blunt response, a frosty glare, scathing attack on their ineptitude or arrogance, or cutting sarcasm.
Whatever the reply, they do not seem to learn and will repeat the same questions well-knowing what the answer will be but go ahead nonetheless and then twist it to fit a particular narrative.
And so it was when a France-24 TV journalist interviewed President Paul Kagame last week. After asking questions on a variety of topics, he couldn’t resist asking the now usual question. Will he run for president in the next election? Upon which the president responded with devastating sarcasm that he would consider running for the next twenty years.
He could have left it at that and it would have served the journalist and others like him right. But the president was generous and offered a detailed explanation of what elections mean and the role and right of citizens in making their choice.
He has been in that sort of mood lately. At a press conference held at the end of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali (CHOGM) last month, he gave a BBC journalist a lesson on real values, human rights and governance.
Still, the generosity did not stop all the major western news networks from running headlines: Kagame to seek fourth term. The Times went even farther and claimed: I want to rule Rwanda for 20 years more, says Kagame.
He said no such thing and they know it. Not that there is any problem with it. But that is what they chose to report. The rest of the interview and the explanation on elections and democracy was apparently irrelevant. Attention-grabbing headlines that feed into a selected narrative became the news. The real news remained unreported.
Did all these networks miss the sarcasm? They couldn’t. It was plain – in the tone, in the body language. They simply picked out what suited them.
Did they misunderstand Kagame’s reply? Not a chance. It was patient and elaborate. They simply ignored it because it did not suit their purpose.
Ordinary people like me would be driven to utter exasperation by insincere questioning that never ceases. Or irritation that Rwandans’ right and ability to make their choice can be questioned. Or the sheer insolence and hypocrisy. I would call those asking those questions and spreading false reports stupid and liars and hypocrites, and other choice names.
But I am not president and that is probably why. It seems to me patience is a necessary requirement for a president - to be able to take all the insults and blame on our behalf and yet not allow to be distracted but keep delivering. Ours has loads of it.