Kenya’s presidential election

The election’s aftermath resulted in violence

In this week’s The Listening Post, Richard Gizbert takes a look at how the media, both Kenyan and international, have covered the first global story of the year – Kenya’s election turmoil. In this episode, we also track the explosion of news channels in India.

Our lead story this week analyses the media’s coverage of Kenya’s political troubles. The victory of Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent president, following presidential polls whipped up a storm of protest in the country, with the opposition crying foul and ethnic tensions flaring.

Coverage by the international media veered towards a repetition of familiar images and narratives of tribal anger, African poverty and corrupt leadership. For a Kenyan media that attempted to cover the unrest in a more comprehensive manner, the tribal divisions of the country worked against them and local camera crew and journalists found themselves unable to do their job without risking their lives.

For a group of Africans working to create a pan-African media channel, Kenya’s post-election turmoil and its coverage is a clear example of why the continent needs its own media network. The Western media’s cliched notions of Africa, the perils of covering local issues when tribal rivalries are rife, and the hopes for a pan-African media channel – Richard Gizbert takes us through the maze of media issues surrounding Kenya.

Soon, you will be able to get Osama Bin Laden on your phone

In our media updates section Newsbytes, we spotlight the latest move of al-Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahab. Recently, the group announced that videos from al-Qaeda will be made available on mobile phones and not just via the internet and on television.

Another media snippet this week comes from the Republican campaign trail in the United States, where Fox News was targeted by supporters of Ron Paul for excluding their candidate from a televised debate. Fox News is well known for being sympathetic to the Republicans and the war against Iraq. Critics of this decision claim that Ron Paul was excluded because of his anti-war sentiments.

Finally, we turn to Myanmar where the government has raised satellite licensing fees by 16,000% in what media watchers say is an attempt to restrict people from watching foreign news channels.

The feature story in this week’s episode takes us to India, which has been seeing an explosion of TV news channels over the past couple of years. With 60 news channels, India has more news channels than any country in the world, and as Meenakshi Ravi reports, the sheer over-supply of televised news could be the reason why broadcast journalism has become so sensation-driven.

India is the country with the most news channels

Bollywood, cricket and fashion are taking up more and more airtime as the chase for ratings pushes programming towards whatever appeals to the largest number of people. While the monopoly of the state broadcaster has been broken with the influx of private news channels, broadcast journalism has taken a hit because of the increasing competition.

Closing off our show is our weekly video of the week. It is a quirky Japanese take off on visual special effects with an Olympic theme.

Watch part one of this episode of The Listening Post on YouTube

 

Watch part two of this episode of The Listening Post on YouTube

This episode of The Listening Post airs from Friday, January 11, 2008