Seeking the other side of issues is a crucial element of journalism. In the coverage of last week’s most important story, aid resumption by the International Monetary Fund and other "donors", some reporters and editors remembered this tenet. Some did not.

When the aid resumption news first hit the airwaves last Saturday, coverage by the entire broadcast media was one big Hallelujah.

All broadcasting houses cheered in their reportage on how the resumption of aid was going to give the country a new lease of life. Nothing this significant had happened in the last 10 years, they said. And the country was instantly thrown into a party mood.

Then everybody had a chance to sleep over the news. And when the country woke up the next day, the print media rolled out newspapers with varying angles of the story. While most were still caught up in the Hallelujah, only the Sunday Standard made the transition required of journalism. The Sunday Standard writers went behind the celebration to seek the other side of the issue.

"The Price of Aid", is the headline the editors gave to their findings.

Yes, the news that the country was again in the good books of the world’s most important lender was momentous. It signalled that the country was once more on the list of creditworthy nations after years in the cold.

Now only people who have lived in the West can appreciate the significance of having a good credit record. In the United States, for example, when Johnny walks into a barbershop for a haircut and pays by credit card, the transaction is electronically submitted to a central credit bureau.

At the end of the month, depending on what understanding Johnny has with his credit card company, he is expected to settle a certain percentage of his haircut bill. If he defaults, the credit card owners double what he owes the next month around. If the defaulting habit goes on to unacceptable levels, the lending company cancels Johnny’s credit card and reports him to the credit bureau.

The whistle is blown and, forthwith, Johnny’s credit history becomes bad. The next time he wants to own a telephone, buy furniture or pay his car insurance, the guy on the other side of the counter will ask Johnny for his Social Security Number. That is keyed into a circuit that digs up Johnny’s credit history from the credit bureau, in seconds.

If it turns out that Johnny’s credit history is bad, not even a carpenter’s shop will sell a chair to him. And his life becomes impossible.

Similarly, no dealer will now turn Kenya down on its needs. And although we may pay back the credit through our teeth, we are all expected to begin living improved lives.

This is the way the world operates today. This is why when the IMF signals that Kenya is now creditworthy, those who know take the day off and head to the nearest pub. It is a day for celebration.

But it is not the place for journalism to celebrate.

The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing according to Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in their 2001 book, The Elements of Journalism, What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect.

That being the case, journalism should not accompany the crowd to the pub. While the crowd is boozing away and dancing to Hallelujah, it should do what the Sunday Standard did: take a pause and ask the crucial question, at what cost is the country getting a new lease of life?

Nearly 23,000 jobs are on the line; no new recruitment; a freeze on all those promised salary increases, and a demand that the Government ease out of control of parastatals. This is what the Sunday Standard found out. It detailed the repercussions of privatising roads, railway, and the ports authority.

But if most of these demands are subject to technical boardroom manoeuvres that may only indirectly hurt the guy on the street, the paper pointed out that perhaps most disheartening to Wanjiku will be the demand to cut out subsidies to farmers.

This direct pinch on Wanjiku the farmer is what Mutuma Mathiu, writing for the Sunday Nation on December 8, 2002, criticised the West for.

US President, Mr George Bush, had announced in May last year some $51.7 billion (Sh4 trillion) in farm subsidies spread over the next 10 years for American farmers. His reason? To preserve the farmer’s way of life.

Everyone knows that the US hardly needs agriculture to thrive. In Kenya, on the other hand, agriculture is the only sector where, to borrow Mathiu’s words, we have a snowball’s chance in hell to compete in the world market. By paying his farmers to lock out ours from the market, Bush behaved like a thief who steals what he does not need, Mathiu complained.

The Sunday Standard did not need to add that by demanding that Kenya throttle its farmers, the IMF might have finished Bush’s dirty job for him. And most of the press missed it all. After its initial "IMF, thanks a billion" headline, the Daily Nation finally got around to an incisive analysis two days later, on Tuesday.

But Jaindi Kisero’s story, "State holds back on fresh pay†hikes for the Civil Service", was buried in the Business Week.

Kodi Barth teaches journalism at United States International University-Nairobi.

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The test of truth

Compare with the previous week’s coverage of the three big issues which threw a monkey wrench into journalism’s first obligation – truth. Or did they not?

Worthy of mention were the stories of alleged abuse of office by three cabinet ministers, the uproar against last Sunday Standard’s lead story about cabinet ministers barred from State House, and a fleeting mention of Raila Odinga’s alleged about-turn on premiership.

Going by the way the press covered these stories, it turned out that truth in journalism is not the immutable, objective, philosophical truth we all imagine it is.

"Three ministers face grilling over contract," said Nation’s headline of November 8. David Okwemba reported how ministers Dr Mukhisa Kituyi, Prof Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o and Mr John Michuki had allegedly interfered with a Sh1.5billion tender for dockyard cranes. The three were alleged to have been behind the postponement of a Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) tender for eight giant cranes, to allow a parastatal called Numerical Machining Complex and another, to bid. Pressure was said to have been brought to bear and the ministers portrayed to have acted fraudulently.

A clear cut-and-dry story you would say but truth is not like that of a chemical equation. Journalism seeks a practical or functional form of truth. It pursues truth that we can use day to day. There was no question about the accuracy of the various reports. They evidently maintained a reasonable degree of detachment, attributed their assertions, spelt names right and verified dates. The reporters probably got their facts right but the ensuing twists and turns in the story over the course of the week begged the question, is sticking simply to accuracy sufficient in the pursuit of truth?

No. Journalism built merely on accuracy fails to get us far enough. Mere accuracy can be a kind of distortion on its own. We may publish accounts that are factually correct but substantially untrue.

There are two tests of truth, according to Kovach and Rosenstiel - correspondence and coherence. For journalists this roughly translates into getting the facts straight and making sense of the facts. Coherence must be the ultimate test of journalistic truth. People want meaning out of stories. They want the whole picture, not just part of it.

Just like in the popular KTN weekend News Shot, a story may be factually reported but substantially untrue. We shall return to this another time.

• Kodi Barth teaches journalism at United States International University-Nairobi.

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