How to pick the right words to tell truth about dams scandal

The Nation has done excellent work in reporting the dams scandal. It has broken new ground in reporting a matter of great public interest with the co-operation of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations. And it has done so — with some minor lapses — without compromising its editorial integrity and independence.

CRUSADING

While information on the DCI investigations — on what’s probably the biggest scam since Goldenberg of the 1990s — is generally available to all media, the Nation’s reporting has stood out for its enterprise, creativity and inventiveness. It has presented the stories with an unmistakable “publish and be damned” attitude. This is a mantra first popularised by the British tabloid newspaper, The Daily Mirror, which built its circulation after the Second World War by standing up to authority and the Establishment to represent the interests of the working people.

The Nation has given a new meaning to that slogan. It established its crusading credentials in 1973, unearthing a multi-million-shilling racket involving the Ministry of Health’s Medical Stores. “The Drug Scandal”, (Daily Nation, June 18, 1973) exposed government officials who were enriching themselves while endangering Kenyans and causing loss of public funds through purchase of expired drugs, imitation and untried medicines and overstocking.

A 2013 University of Nairobi study, “A content analysis of the Nation newspaper coverage of corruption related stories,” confirms the Nation “publish and be damned” attitude. The researcher, Lucy Karanja, finds the Nation “plays a major role in sending corruption messages to the public”. It does this by giving stories about corruption “distinct prominence” and making “an extra effort to expose corrupt incidences (sic) in government institutions”.

SEASON TWO

In this second season of hunting the corrupt — the first in recent months was the NYS exposé late last year, in which the Nation named people paid millions of shillings by the bagful for “selling air” to the government department — the Nation has honed its use of impactful headlines, written like poetry, used in the NYS exposé. Do you remember “It’s Kabura season II”, “It runs in the family” and “For Omollo, it’s fish fingers at breakfast”, among others?

“You paid Sh21bn for empty thicket”, runs the front-page headline on February 26, 2019. The kicker (the first few words of a story, set in larger font than the rest of the story) reads: “The AG told Kerio Valley Development Authority ‘don’t dare,’ but they went ahead and took a foreign bank loan of Sh61 billion and paid Sh21 billion for a dam that has not been designed, and even the bush has not been cleared. Now the banks are asking Kenya to start servicing the loan — taken for a thicket.”

This is investigative-plus-interpretative reporting. It’s powerful. And we now have a new idiom — “empty thicket” — even though there’s no such thing as an empty thicket as they all have trees and bushes.

Other headlines include the February 22 “Dams scandal could sink four ministers”, with a kicker that begins: “The chickens have come home to roost for Cabinet Secretaries....”; The March 1 “Dams scandal: The fightback”, with a kicker that begins: “As investigations into the Sh21 billion dam racket hot up, the political fangs are finally out….”; and the March 6 “Why Rotich is walking a tight rope”, with a kicker that begins: “Moment of truth: Cabinet Secretary questioned into the night over suspected graft…”.

RIGHT FACTS

The Nation has excelled in the poetry of headlines. Like poems, the headlines have a distinctive style and locution and say a lot in a tightly constrained space where every word counts. The headlines aptly summarise and reflect the content and tone of the stories.

In my article, “Any journalist worth reading must be something of a poet” (June 22, 2018), I suggested that journalists and poets seek the truth, carefully choosing words to convey the right facts and emotions, and that in every good journalist there’s a poet.

English poet and playwright William Shakespeare would have made a good journalist for Nation’s enterprise journalism. In Henry V, The Bard makes King Henry rally his troops to attack a breach in the wall of an enemy city with these words: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” In Hamlet, he wrote “To be or not to be: that is the question.”

Shakespeare wrote many more poetic and memorable lines, including “Hell is empty and all the devils are here” and “All that glitters is not gold”.

Journalism and poetry intersect, as I suggested. Both are in pursuit of the truth. The challenge for both, as with the Nation writers and editors working on corruption stories, is to pick the right words that express the truth.

* * *

Let’s appreciate our journalists

I receive many comments from readers about the bad things that journalists do, but rarely anything about the good things they do. I would, therefore, like to echo the good words of my colleague in Uganda, Odoobo Bichachi, whose public editor’s column, which appears in The Monitor, states:

“[The] public editor is not all about mistakes and complaints! There are many things journalists do every day that have a big impact on the public good and posterity. These shall be highlighted so that the sacrifices journalists make to produce outstanding stories are not taken for granted by anyone, least of all the public.

“Remember, too, the good words of John Ray, the English cleric-cum-naturalist, who often saw the study of natural science as an extension of his religious work. ‘Good words cool more than cold water,’ he used to say.”

Send your complaints to [email protected]. Call or text 0721 989 264