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{
    "id": 1151135,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1151135/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 50,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wambua",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13199,
        "legal_name": "Enoch Kiio Wambua",
        "slug": "enoch-kiio-wambua"
    },
    "content": "In this country, there is one thing that we, as journalists, have fought so hard for. That is the issue of regulation of the media space. It is only in the media industry that other people that are not journalists would want to come in and regulate it. You will never see a journalist going to an association of medics, teachers or lawyers and try to regulate their operations. This far, I would like to applaud the Government because I rarely do so. I think it has done well as far as opening the media space in this country and allowing a measure of self-regulation. However, the problem that we are faced with is two-fold. First, is the issue of self-censorship where individual journalists fear publishing or broadcasting certain stories for reasons that are not directly related to the public right to know. The other challenge that we face today in the media space in this country is quite in line with the theme of this year’s World Press Freedom Day, which is ‘Journalism Under Digital Siege’. Mr. Speaker, Sir, as I conclude my contribution, journalists and media houses must come to terms with the reality that the media space as we knew it is shrinking and a lot of it moving to the phone. Therefore, there is need for innovation by media houses to know that it does not make any sense these days to get a story and hope that you break that story the following day in a newspaper. Media houses and journalists must invest heavily in investigative journalism. Otherwise by the time newspapers come out the following day, or by the time it is two hours to prime time news, the story that you wanted to sell or publish will have already been spread across the nation through the phones. We Lastly, Mr. Speaker, Sir, this is important, especially in Kenya, that we must continue to draw the line in media houses between commercial interests and the right of the public to know. I know of many cases where journalists have been unable to publish well-researched investigative pieces to protect commercial interests because some organisations and institutions have huge budgets for advertising. For journalism to play its rightful role in this nation, that line must be clear, that there must be a difference between commercial interests of a newsroom and the public right to know which is held by practising journalists."
}