FREEING THE MEDIA OF POLITICIANS AND THEIR BAG OF POLY-TRICKS

The mass media is a very powerful tool. Leave it in the wrong hands or fill it with parochial content, and all manner of trouble will most likely be let loose. That's why every credible media outlet needs to be wary of publicity-seeking politicians. There's always almost an embedded self-interest they wish to propagate, whenever they make public pronouncements.

Six 'prominent' Kenyans honoured summonses to appear before the International Criminal Court, in the Hague, Netherlands. So whichever way you choose to look at them, they remain suspected masterminds of the2007/2008  post-election violence.

Yet, sections of the local media seem to backbench this fact and unwittingly fail to realize that  according the suspects the sort of hyped coverage they have provided, in a way helps to negate the gravity and severity of the alleged crimes the Ocampo Six are being accused of committing.

So while thousands of Internally Displaced Persons continue to languish in squalid living conditions in tented camps, the public is inundated with live TV coverage of the arrival of two of the Ocampo Six habouring presidential ambitions.

And too add injury to insults, the local media then put their resources at the disposal and pleasure of the Suspects, in their so-called prayer rally, welcoming, homecoming or whatever misleading title the organizers had come up with.

Tellingly, as it has repeatedly been pointed out, it is a wonder that on a normal working day, thousands of people could still find time to be part of the purported  'show of might' by the Suspects. Think of the wasted man-hours, even if they fall on the idle side of the occupation scale.

But the tragedy is made complete by a neutered local media, which seems to have abandoned its allegiance to the public, in favour of politicians and their bag of poly-tricks.