Media at cross-roads: Reflections on the Kenyan news and the coverage of the 2007 political crisis

Abstract

The coverage of the 2007 post-election violence by Kenya’s news media cannot be disaggregated from the institutional defi ciencies of the Kenyan state. This article argues that coverage of the crisis revealed a media at a cross-roads; one embedded in the state’s institutional failures yet expected to stand apart from them. The article further argues that local coverage of the confl ict was in fact revealing of a separate ‘crisis’ simultaneously facing the Kenyan news media. A combination of factors ranging from the media’s internal structural weaknesses to a weak national regulatory media regime, poor policy and legal frameworks affected the coverage.