Kenya Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
March 14, 2012
About the MSI
IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country's media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and began studying Africa in 2006.
MSI Overview | Africa | Asia | Europe & Eurasia | Middle East & North Africa
Download Complete Kenya Chapter (PDF): 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2006/7
MSI Kenya-2010 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 2.31
Kenya’s constitution guarantees the freedom of expression, yet there is no specific provision within the national constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press. A positive development is that a new draft constitution, if endorsed, includes press freedom. However, other restrictive laws prohibit freedom of speech and of the press. The state security forces use these on many occasions to muzzle opposition voices. For example, the controversial Communications Amendment Bill of 2008, which journalists and media owners highly contested, remains in force, with no changes in the offending provisions. The government enacted the Communications Amendment Bill into law over strong objections by journalists and media owners. The Bill gave the Minister of Internal Security excessive power to raid media houses and to seize equipment in “emergency” situations.
Last year’s MSI panel described arrests, harassment, and intimidation of journalists, but those incidents declined in 2010, and panelists agreed that the media environment improved notably overall. Still, while no journalists died this year, the panelists surmised that journalists are adopting less aggressive reporting tactics, succumbing to self-censorship after years of intimidation. On a positive note, however, the judiciary is regaining independence and control, separating from KANU, the ruling party. Of late, the judiciary is moving in the right direction, and certain judgments have fallen in favor of the media houses. In 2010 alone, the panel members counted four cases in favor of the media houses.
Improvements in media plurality are evident as well. The media are attracting new investors, who have helped launch many new print and electronic media houses. Online media and news blogs continue to grow, and media training institutions are mushrooming as well, all as a result of the improved press freedom climate. At the same time, panelists expressed concern that these developments have compromised overall media quality due to a lack of a central control and legal framework for training institutions. Panelists also said that with improvements in media freedom, the specter of abuse grows, especially by practitioners entering the profession from other sectors (e.g., disc jockeys and comedians employed as radio producers and presenters by some FM stations) who lack professional training in journalism.
Despite such lingering concerns, the prevailing media improvements have helped unify media professionals. The journalists’ associations and their developing partners are busy providing training and equipment, such as cameras and small recorders, in preparation for the forthcoming elections in 2012.
