Journalists not doing enough to protect African interests

Editor, RE: “We don’t need lessons from the Kenyan election drama” (The New Times, September 2). Your editorial states, among other things, that “...what is most frustrating is that African media houses have sadly jumped on the bandwagon and continue to perpetuate the same shallow narrative” about an Africa that must always receive lessons from the West. I believe one of your columnists, Lonzen Rugira, has already amply made this point in this paper (alluding to our media’s unerringly solid record of own goals), eliciting shrieks of unconvincing denunciations from those who recognized themselves in his commentary. Our media people are to a large extent nothing more than the echo-chambers of their Western counterparts whom they would like to emulate and whom they mimic shamelessly, some consciously but many no doubt without even realizing the fact. Some also are nothing more than mercenaries, ready to trash their own countries as their paymasters ask them, as long as they receive their pieces of silver or accumulate brownie points in their favor banks for future encasement. We need a new kind of media people; those that put their countries, their own societies and African interests front and center. We certainly need those who behave like journalistic versions of black skin, white faces as much as we need holes in our heads. Mwene Kalinda

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Journalists not doing enough to protect African interests