“I Accuse the Media.” Dr Alfred Mutua Might Have Been Right

 Today, this is going to be a case of a termite biting within.

So the media went ballistic towards the end of last week after government spokesman, Dr Alfred Mutua, said something about the hunger situation in Kenya.

This is the something issued by Dr Mutua: ...“The number of needy Kenyans is expected to get to 4.5 million in the next few months. So far, the Government does not have any official reports of a Kenyan that has died as a result of hunger. We are asking everyone including the media to let us know of any confirmed deaths of a Kenyan due to starvation not old age or diseases. It is wrong and unacceptable for any Kenyan to sleep hungry let alone die and there is food in the country.” It’s one of the eight paragraphs in his statement.

The italicised, ‘reddish’ phrase is what incensed many Kenyans, who responded with mountains of insults, piggish and self-righteous character-injuring phrases that went beyond imaginable levels.

Let us interrogate this sentence: So far, the Government does not have any official reports of a Kenyan that has died as a result of hunger. For any layman, the sentence means that up to the day Dr Mutua said this, the government-the institution he speaks for-had not received any information about Kenyan(s) who had died from lack of food. This could be true. Even though the media or any other organisation might have had some accounts of people dying from hunger, they are not the government, they are them. Dr Mutua’s employer didn’t have (maybe it has now) such info. Period. And he did kindly say so.  

The hullabaloo, was just a mere hysterical, emotional, theatrical reaction occasioned by hatred or ignorance. The idea that, Dr Mutua said that “No Kenyan” had died from the ravaging drought that has born a disastrous famine in the North, as mis(represented) by a huge section of both the mainstream and social media is misplaced and qualifies for misuse of the media. Unless there’s something missing here, he did not say that. He just said he (plus the government) had not picked out any death that had directly died from failing to eat. Of course, someone might mention echoes, connotations, feelings, arising from this statement but they would remain those and those only: echoes, connotations, feelings and other reactions.

Enough of that. Back to Dr Alfred. Honestly, the guy did not do himself any good by saying such a statement that could be easily misunderstood as reckless, uncaring and propagandist-most reactions pointed to such adjectives immediately Dr finished uttering the statement.

We can suggest a better statement that would have sufficed without attracting controversies or hurting people at this emotional moment but relaying the same message: “So far, we have been on the ground distributing foodstuff and collating information about the causes of death reported in the media. After our thorough investigation we have found out that the deaths might have been initiated by other causes but rushed by starvation. However... then the rest of the statement... “It is wrong and unacceptable for any Kenyan to sleep hungry let alone die and there is food in the country” that would have been better, or don’t you think so? Other than just implying that the government was not capable of doing its role and that it was ready to abdicate its duty of collecting such statistics to the media. Furthermore, that it (government) was not so interested in getting its machinery to help the hungry people.

Dr Mutua’s statement might have been hurried with an intention of showing government’s commitment in fighting the disaster. However, it has done more damage than face-saving. People on the social media (Twitter and Facebook) didn’t do better by spurting out vitriol directed at the spokesman. The mainstream media didn’t counter the statement with right information; they jumped into the vitriolic social-media bandwagon.

Moral Lesson: It’s always safe to consider the kind of words you use to express something. They can be construed or misconstrued and the originator takes the blame in whole.