No basis citing media for bias in campaigns coverage
There has been a discussion in the public space about whether Kenyan media are biased in their coverage of the coming elections. The response to that debate is not straight forward as some may make it to be.
There are simplistic responses to this question on a range of platforms. Some look at the ownership of a media house and argue that based on the alignment of the media owner, then by extension that media house is biased in favour of the candidate the owner supports. It is not necessarily so.
Other arguments are advanced that depending on the amount of time, or space, given to a news source, then the media house is biased in favour of that news source. Bias, it is proffered, is proportional to the amount of time a news source is given.
Again, that is not necessarily so. There are too many other variables informing bias.
Let us start with the question of the owner. The owner may pay the bills at the media house and even influence the decision of the managers. But the process of news production is a complex affair. It is critical to understand how news processing happens and how stories are framed.
Factors used to influence framing include the camera angle, the placement of the story in the news lineup – whether the story is at the beginning of the news bulletin or towards the end, the selection of words, and the stories leading to the story and the stories that come after it. If it is a newspaper, it matters the size of the picture, the direction of the picture and what else is competing with the picture on the page of the newspaper. There are other subtle factors such as whether the picture is full colour or in black and white and what page it appears in.
It would matter, during interviews, the kind of programmes a political candidate is invited to. One may be given a lot of time, but interviewed by less consequential journalists, while the other may be given less time but interviewed in prime time.
A political candidate may be given a lot of time and space, but that time and space are devoted to discussing scandals that the candidate is associated with.
The media owner will not be there when most of these decisions are being made and may not even know what the experts, the journalists, are doing. Thus, the leaning of the media owner, whether he or she attends a political rally or not may be neither here nor there.
The other factor often cited in support of the bias thesis is whether one candidate is being given more time than the others. For a start, it would be very difficult to give equal time to competing candidates since that would depend on the kind of events the candidates have organised and the newsworthiness of those events.
In fact, the question would be whether the difference in exposure given to a candidate is statistically, both from a qualitative and quantitative point of view, significantly different from that given to the opponent. This is a question that cannot be answered without proper research.
An incumbent candidate will always have more time compared to the opposition. The reason is simple. By virtue of the position that the incumbent holds, such a candidate will have many official engagements that will morph into a campaign appearance. Candidates with better name recognition will get more exposure than candidates with limited brands.
In the Kenyan case, the Kenya Kwanza brigade complains of less exposure in the media. This may be a hollow complaint when placed in context. How long has the team been campaigning compared with their opponents?
But further, their complaints have been directed at specific media – would that mean that there are other media that may in fact be perceived to be favouring them. Attacking the media may just be a ruse to attract sympathy coverage. It could also be a subtle way to control the media.
— The writer is the dean, School of Communication, Daystar University
