I once asked a diplomat in Nairobi why they have the habit of calling top editors and seasoned columnists — not reporters — to embassy receptions, where folks just indulge in small talk, drink from tall crystal glasses, nimble at tiny biting and go home.

The man gave a mischievous smile.

"When you want to know what’s really going on in the country," he said, "these are the people to talk to." It comes true every weekend that after loud headlines have triggered furious debate all week, it is editorials, commentaries and columns that come to analyse the story behind the headlines.

This week was no different. The biggest story was the events following the launch last week of presidential candidate Raila Odinga’s biography. That book caused a

ruckus. When on Monday I walked into a downtown bookshop to buy my copy and asked how many copies had been sold that morning alone, an attendant said they had sold 3,000 copies.

That was startling; considering it was only 11 am and that

a copy costs Sh1,500. That book, Raila Odinga: An enigma in Kenyan Politics, had everyone talking.

Most notable was the loud calls that the former Cabinet minister should be prosecuted for treason over his alleged

role in the 1982 attempted coup, as the book appeared to show his hand in it.

That was sure to instantly spark a national shouting match. And it did. Politicians, among them notable lawyers, came on television with a torrent of words.

Some said: Raila should be in jail. Others whined: He should be hanged, with a rope. But his supporters came to press conferences with the book and, with an I-hate-to-argue-with-ignorant-people attitude.

They simply wondered aloud if the talking heads had read the book. So someone asked Attorney General Amos Wako to referee. And the country’s smiling chief legal adviser waited a few precious days before unleashing his verdict — it can’t and won’t happen.

Period. Even if Raila confessed to plotting to kill the then President, which nobody says he did, we are 24 years too late, the public would not care less, and a prosecutor would have to raise witnesses from the dead.

All this time, the media had little else for lead stories. They wrote countless headlines, held talk shows, drew cartoons,

interviewed experts and wringed every juice from the story. Then, as The Daily Nation reported Friday, former director of

public prosecution Philip Murgor handed down a deadpan summary: the debate was a waste of time.

So what was the media hollering about the whole week? The episode underlines something that perennially dodges journalism.

It is the issue of how to pick out the fundamental from the trivial, the significant from the sensational, the real issues from sideshows. It is not that reporters and news writers are incapable of identifying the real issues.

The thing is that there is also the other concern: newspapers must sell, and broadcasts must maintain or improve audience ratings. In the dilemma to catch the citizen’s eye and ear, it is the sensational that sprouts to the top.

The real issues are often considered plain and boring. So they tend to fail the law of buoyancy and remain at the bottom, buried in the inside pages of a newspaper

and tucked away between unpleasant broadcast hours.

And so it is the analysts who come at the end of the week to ask if you noticed that despite the torrent of words, the subject, Raila, did not appear one bit perturbed.

While pedestrians asked why on earth Raila permitted that the alleged confession be published, the man’s only notable

comment amid the furious debates was: "Read the book."

So how is it that at the close of what began like massive negative publicity for Raila, Steadman Research Group

announced Friday that the man’s rating for President, now standing at 16 per cent behind President Kibaki and 11 per

cent behind Mwingi North MP Kalonzo Musyoka, is largely because of his "national appeal?’’

Is this all politics? Ask editors and columnists.