This archive report was first published on 3 December 2019.
December 3, 2019
As a journalist, I've seen the profession change dramatically over the years. What was once a noble pursuit has become a thankless job, where the truth is often sacrificed for the sake of politics.
My colleague, a multiple award-winning journalist, recently confided in me about his growing disillusionment with the profession. He felt that his stories, no matter how well-researched, were being used by politicians to further their own interests.
'What's the point of doing what we do, if the very people we are investigating find a way to use our work as talking points when it is politically expedient for them?' he lamented.
As millennials, my colleague and I joined the newsroom during President Mwai Kibaki's optimistic days. However, we've since witnessed the digital revolution and struggling media business models lead to wave after wave of job losses.
Today, we find ourselves caught in the middle of a dysfunctional state, where even participating in straightforward reportage makes one feel complicit in propagandist narratives.
Many in our cohort have left the profession, and for those of us who remain, what keeps us going is a kind of psychological wage. It's the quiet assurance that if nothing else, we are writing the first draft of history, and perhaps somewhere down the road, our work will hold powerful people to account.
However, even this last bastion of meaning is threatened in a context where memories are short and even the most thoroughly researched investigation can be repurposed into redemptive talking points for those implicated.
Still, I believe this environment may provide an opportunity for the emergence of alternative spaces for self-expression. If journalists, artists, writers, and filmmakers are going to find a way to address these challenges, then they need sanctuaries for trust-building, innovation, and opportunities for collaboration.
Initiatives like Book Bunk are revitalising public libraries and repositioning them as physical spaces for shared knowledge, heritage, and memory. And events like Too Early For Birds, The Moth, and Engage KE are bringing emerging voices into the public discourse, pushing the boundaries for what is possible in the country's creative ecosystem and collective imagination.
As Dr Cornel West once said, 'joy in your moral and spiritual witness enacted even as you fall on your face.' To move forward, we must find each other in this moral and intellectual desert and create our own oases, where new possibilities can emerge.
Ms Mungai is the curator of Baraza Media Lab, to be launched this month.
