DITCH FORMALITIES, CUE POLITICAL STAGE NAME

It's only a matter of days now before Kenya's General Election. The country has nevertheless almost perpetually been in an electioneering mode, ever since the last polls. The newsroom frenzy of election campaigns coverage has seen the media and politicians form an unwilling alliance. Is it surprising then that a newspaper can deem it fit to ditch formalities and just refer a prominent politician by his political stage name?

Is it a case of too much familiarity?

Maybe it is yet another attempt to try and match the style and lingo of millennials.

Or is the shortened version of the name more convenient for the available space for the headline?

Whichever the case may be, it is a tad distressing for a national paper to assume any potential reader, will understand who the person they are referring to is, be they locals or foreigners.

One is even tempted to think that at this rate, we'll soon start seeing the media having no qualms about using popular nicknames like Rao, Uunye, MaDVD, or other more disparaging references, on first mention.

If that is the trend, then I fear we could soon be seeing the local mainstream media disastrously mimicking social media parlance, in a desperate attempt to retain a vanishing audience, in order to remain relevant and viable.

Quotation marks would have sufficed here, but don't quote me!

SENSELESS NEWS NONSENSE: WHEN EDITORIAL AND PRODUCTION FALL APART

What makes sense to the media can be nonsense to the audience. And what amounts to nonsense in newsrooms can actually make a lot of sense to readers. But in a moment of extreme idiocy, that which is senseless, oozes lots of nonsense, for both the media outlet and its audience. It can happen, when a newspaper's editorial and production departments fall apart.

Indeed, there comes a time when minimum editorial judgement and maximum production senselessness are perfectly aligned, to publish, well...NONSENSE!

Grabbed from the flagship news product of the largest, (and 'misleading') media house in the region, the picture above, and its horrifying caption, astounded many a Kenyan reader.

It is not right on many wrong levels, rendered (using a presumably dead Latin language) in unintelligible morphemes like: "Quod mo intro utum at, egertum..." etcetera ad nauseam.

The central figure in the chaotic presidential campaign launch, is given the name of a vocal agitator of the rights of teachers, in a union with a prolific affinity to national strikes.

Here, at least the newspaper can be sued for wrongful representation of a highly recognisable political figure.

The custodian of teachers' welfare can likewise claim damages for being dragged into the murky world of politics.

Possible compensation models for aggrieved readers

Of greater concern to me is how the readers, (especially those who have invested their money in a news product, expecting to be better off, after consuming its content), should be compensated.

- Should they be allowed to return the 'faulty' newspaper to the news-stand, and ask for a refund?

- Should the paper's proprietors be compelled to provide a subsequent product for free, just like they do to advertisers, whose paid for commercial do not go out as scheduled?

- Should offended readers sue the paper for professional negligence, causing mental anguish and intellectual distress to law abiding citizens?

- Should the newspaper's publishers be penalised for violating their contractual obligation to take every care not to put out an erroneous product in the market, so as to uphold the sanctity of the buyer-seller covenant?

Too many unanswered questions...hopefully making sense.

Somebody ought to take responsibility for publishing the senseless news nonsense.