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Abstract
The post-election violence in Kenya in December 2007 through to April 2008 was reported extensively but erratically in the British media. While BBC News Online, the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent gave regular coverage with online updates on their websites, other mass circulation media like Sky, the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail were more sparing in their coverage. But a common factor to all was a tendency to rely on simple, all-encompassing descriptive and analytical language to frame the reporting of the conflict – focusing on tribal and ethnic issues to the virtual exclusion of broader and deeper analyses of factors involved. This paper examines the coverage and compares and contrasts that coverage with some of the more thoughtful and in-depth analyses produced by experienced journalists and academics. The paper looks, too, at the journalistic processes and habits that may have led to this concentration on, in particular, the “tribal” and ethnic explanations of the violence. The study will draw on an analysis, quantitative and qualitative, of the content of British media coverage from December 2007 to April 2008 and on the author's first-hand experience of covering Africa as a BBC journalist and a writer for specialist African publications over 30 years.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank David Welsh, Gabrielle Lynch, David Wiley, David Anderson, Joseph Warungu and Julian Petley for their support, assistance with sources and constructive criticism during the writing of this article.
Notes
1. Daily Mail, February 12, 2008.
2. CitationAtkinson, “Deconstructing Media Mythologies,” 192.
3. For more detailed examinations of these issues see CitationKlopp, “Ethnic Clashes”; CitationLynch, “Courting the Kalenjin”; CitationBerman, Control and Crisis; and CitationHuman Rights Watch, Kenya.
4. CitationKlopp, “Ethnic Clashes”; CitationHuman Rights Watch, Kenya.
5. Anderson, “Kenya's Agony.”
6. CitationLynch, “Courting the Kalenjin,” 542–3.
7. CitationHuman Rights Watch, Kenya, 5.
8. CitationLynch, “Courting the Kalenjin,” 542.
9. UNHCR website: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,463af2212,469f2e3c2,469f3aa32a,0.html (accessed August 10, 2009).
10. CitationLynch, Kenyan Politics, chap. 1.
11. CitationLynch, ‘Courting the Kalenjin’
12. Fergal Keane, BBC News Online, January 23, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7205762.stm (accessed August 10, 2009).
13. All of this summarises the detailed account to be found in the special issue of the Journal of Eastern Africa Studies 2, no. 2 (2008), but see especially CitationCheeseman, “The Kenyan Elections of 2007”, CitationThroup, “The Count”, and David Anderson and Emma Lochery, “Violence and Exodus in Kenya's Rift Valley.”
14. Interviews with BBC reporters, producers and editors, and editors for the BBC Monitoring Service. These include personal phone interviews with Chris Greenway (senior editor BBC monitoring), Joseph Warungu, Editor of the BBC World Service Focus on Africa programme and e-mail interviews with other BBC staff covering the conflict who preferred to remain anonymous.
15. CitationBBC World Service Trust, 2.
16. CitationBBC World Service Trust, 14.
17. CitationBBC World Service Trust, 14.
18. CitationHuman Rights Watch, Kenya.
19. CitationBranch and Cheeseman, “Democratization,” 13.
20. CitationButcher, Blood River, 4.
21. CitationMatheson, Media Discourses, 15.
22. CitationMatheson, Media Discourses, 24.
23. CitationSomerville, “BBC Wounds,” 67.
24. Allen and Seaton, “Introduction,” 3.
25. CitationDavies, Flat Earth News, 114.
26. CitationDavies, Flat Earth News, 69.
27. CitationDavies, Flat Earth News, 69–70.
28. Article available online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/31/kenya.international1 (accessed August 10, 2009).
29. Article available online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jan/03/kibakimustbackdown (accessed August 10, 2009)
30. The Mail in fact spiked a comment commissioned from David Anderson in order to make space for the Davy story. Anderson's piece subsequently appeared elsewhere: “Kenya's Agony”.
31. BBC website:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7180946.stm (accessed August 10, 2009)
32. Article available online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7205762.stm (accessed August 10, 2009)
33. CitationDavies, Flat Earth News, 73.
34. Independent, January 30, 2008
35. CitationCaesar, The Gallic War, 27.
36. CitationCaesar, The Civil War, 53, 54, 58.
37. CitationDavidson, The Black Man's Burden, 100.
38. CitationMafeje, “The Ideology of Tribalism,” 253.
39. CitationEkeh, “Social Anthropology,” 688.
40. CitationVail, “Ethnicity in Southern African History,” 2.
41. CitationAzam, “The Redistributive State,” 429.
42. Allen and Seaton, “Introduction,” 3.
43. Allen and Seaton, “Introduction,” 3.
44. Allen and Seaton, “Introduction,” 3.
45. CitationFardon, “Ethnic Pervasion,” 65.
46. CitationFardon, “Ethnic Pervasion,” 70.
47. CitationNewbury and Newbury, “A Catholic Mass in Kigali,” 292.
48. CitationNewbury and Newbury, “A Catholic Mass in Kigali,” 296.
49. Article available online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7180946.stm (accessed August 10, 2009)
50. Anderson, “Kenya on the Brink.”
51. Anderson, “Kenya on the Brink.”
52. CitationHurd, The Search for Peace, 253.
53. CitationKeen, “Who's It Between?,” 82.
54. CitationNiblock, “From ‘Knowing How’,” 40.
55. CitationNiblock, “From ‘Knowing How’,” 40.