#FRONTROW: How I became the subject of another viral fake news

Protesters run for cover as the police teargas NASA allied MPs who wanted to address Kibera youth. A conversation between Larry Madowo and James Orengo of NASA on the incident was twisted around and posted on the Internet. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • All the instruments of state violence were put in place to cower people and to intimidate them so that no national outrage is expressed.
  • Do you kill criminals and children? Is that the law we have in Kenya? That’s fascism, that’s state terror.
  • He posted the fake exchange on the planet’s most trusted source of accurate news, Facebook, where it quickly went viral.
  • Desperate to condemn and attack, the trolls completely ignored the fact that NTV had covered the aftermath of the election more than any other media outlet.
  • “You look raped my friend, don’t joke with Orengo, he is a walking constitution,” Geoffrey Mairura wrote in a message.

I watched Senator James Orengo on Sunday call for a boycott of the Daily Nation and NTV while he was live on, well, NTV! The local media were not reporting the truth, he claimed, so they were relying on international media. A day earlier, I had attended a press conference where he and the NASA leaders present ruled out going to court to contest President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election. They asked their supporters to remain calm as they awaited further direction from the coalition’s leadership and its presidential candidate, Raila Odinga.

Senator James Orengo, called for a boycott of the Daily Nation and NTV, claiming the local media were not reporting the truth. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

“All the instruments of state violence were put in place to cower people and to intimidate them so that no national outrage is expressed,” he said.

“Senator, how can you tell your supporters to remain calm when you continue saying that the election has been stolen, which is likely to agitate them further, when you say a number like 100 have been killed?” I asked.

Ever the brilliant mind, he had a quick response: “Mr Madowo, when people are unhappy with any election in the world, demonstrations do occur! In the United States, following Mr Trump’s election, there were many and they were not peaceful demonstrations. But at least there they are civilized, the police are not trained to kill.”

He was right, of course, so I wanted to bring up an alternative fact from the Interior Cabinet Secretary’s press briefing from earlier that day.

“Dr (Fred) Matiang’i said today that they have not shot at any peaceful protestors; the people they have used force on were criminals who were destroying property or trying to harm others,” I told him.

“Do you kill criminals and children? Is that the law we have in Kenya? That’s fascism, that’s state terror,” he answered before fielding more questions from other reporters.

“What other options are available to you? President Kenyatta and William Ruto were gazetted today as the next President and Deputy President. Short of going to court or calling for mass action, what other options are these you’ll announce later?” I asked the newly re-elected Siaya Senator.

“Well, if I answer it now, I will not answer it later,” he shot back, to laughter from the NASA team behind him and journalists.

“But the constitutional means are varied, there is a cocktail of constitutional means; extra-parliamentary processes that we are aware of.”

ACTIVE IMAGINATION

Later that same Saturday, someone with an active imagination and a promising future in fiction writing made up an entirely different conversation between the two of us and titled it,

“Orengo Blasts Larry Madowo” and went to town on it.

He posted the fake exchange on the planet’s most trusted source of accurate news, Facebook, where it quickly went viral.

I was getting attacked in comment sections for hours before someone forwarded it to me. I shared a screenshot on my official page with a big, fat “FAKE” splashed across it and a link to NASA’s own livestreamed video of the press conference. The claim that I had called protesters criminals especially angered those who tweeted me and inboxed on Facebook.

I stopped reading comments on my Facebook page sometime back but the private messages and tweets got more colourful as the day wore on.

“You look raped my friend, don’t joke with Orengo, he is a walking constitution,” Geoffrey Mairura wrote in a message.

“Were you paid to continue insiting (sic) people? Your posts are so annoying you should preach peace instead nkt,” Eunique Ochieng told me.

This piled on to claims that we had not covered the protests and shootings that followed the announcement of the presidential election result. Even though Smriti Vidyarthi and I had been on air until well past midnight that Friday covering the unrest in parts of the country, the lynch mob was not interested in facts.

They didn’t care that NTV had reporters live on the ground on Saturday in Kibra, Mathare and Kisumu, often putting their own lives in danger as police battled protesters. They didn't care that half our broadcast on Saturday night was just stories about families mourning their kin, like the little girl shot while playing on a balcony in Mathare.

They didn’t care that Matiang’i was so offended by my line of questioning on the police using live bullets on peaceful protesters that he tried to move on but I persisted.

Desperate to condemn and attack, the trolls completely ignored the fact that NTV had covered the aftermath of the election more than any other media outlet. Like I wrote on this page a few weeks ago, the impact of fake news on this election is far much greater than anybody could have imagined.

That is how I ended up a victim of a particularly vicious social media bullying for something I didn’t say. In this brave new world, truth doesn’t matter as long as your lie gets shared aggressively and repeatedly.

Heaven help us!

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