The news-making public treats reporters like the plague. Indeed, journalists are not popular people. Many a parent bemoans what curse befell them the day their son or daughter announces he wants to be a career journalist. And the reason society treats journalists with such contempt is particularly because of the reporter. The reporter is the face that is equated with journalism. And true enough, journalism depends on the reporter. Yet, this fellow gets blamed for all society’s wrongs.

It is much like a certain animal got condemned to fate among the Jews. The Israelites, the Bible tells us, had a rather bizarre way of dealing with society’s wrongs. When prophets blasted kings and pedestrians alike for immoral wrongs and threatened fire and brimstone, the people had an efficient way of dealing with it. They would take a goat, symbolically heap their sins on it, and offer it up to God as burnt offering. The English called this the scapegoat.

Society today treats reporters in a similar fashion. British High Commissioner Edward Clay denies there is a freeze on aid to Kenya, blaming a Standard report this week on "irresponsible journalism", the Daily Nation wrote on Thursday. That charge, too frequently cited by the public, goes directly to the reporter who did the story.

Even on the inside, when a reporter breathlessly crashes at the editor’s desk flashing "a scoop", often the story is thrown back by an infuriated editor yelling incompetence, tucked under various terminologies. Whichever way they turn, reporters find themselves the proverbial scapegoat.

Yet, unlike the biblical scapegoat, our reporters frequently bring this woe unto themselves. They do so when they forget one crucial element in journalism – attribution.

The surest way reporters can convince society that they are merely messengers, the reason they cannot take the flak for unpopular or controversial stories, is by telling their audience who said what they are reporting. Our newspapers here largely take this tenet for granted. The few times they remember it, readers cannot always put a finger on the attributed source.

Take, for instance, the Standard’s "Aid frozen" story on Wednesday. For the 700-word story that probably caused Thursday’s presidential crisis meeting with donors, the paper made the crucial attribution only to "donor sources". It is this lack of concrete attribution that gives news subjects the leeway to deny stories, as the European Union diplomats promptly did.

Yet, because of the sensitive nature of the story, this kind of attribution is professionally accepted. It is only when reporters needlessly omit attribution in such plain stories as the alleged Obel shooting on Wednesday that pardon is not so easily obtainable.

"A city matatu driver was fighting for his life at Kenyatta National Hospital last night after being shot at twice, at point blank range, by renowned HIV/Aids researcher Arthur Obel on a Nairobi city street," the People Daily, wrote on Thursday.

There are no two ways about such a sentence – the reporter has convicted Prof. Obel of the shooting. The absence of an attribution leaves the reporter with no escape clause, should the case turn out otherwise.

The equivalent Kenya Times story, "Enraged Prof Obel shoots matatu driver," also starts out with an equally disputable intro, without the all-important attribution. "Controversial medical researcher Professor Arthur Obel yesterday caused a stir along a city street when he shot a matatu driver who had allegedly blocked his Mercedez Benz car," the paper wrote.

In journalism, we attribute what we do not observe or know to be factual. For decades now, the celebrated author and teacher, Melvin Mencher, has taught that the further reporters are from direct observation, the more concerned they should be about the accuracy of their reports. Accurate and comprehensive direct observation is difficult enough. But only the most foolhardy reporter would stake his or her reputation on the accuracy of a street witness account. To make clear to the reader that the report is not based on the reporter’s direct observation of the event, but on secondhand and third-hand accounts, the reporter attributes the information about the event to a solid source.

Ok, reporters, particularly novice reporters, get irritated by the dictum, "Such-and-such happened, TPS – the police said." Yet this rigid demand, made particularly by the Associated Press, is really for the good of the reporter’s reputation. Always attribute what you do not see – unless it is common knowledge – and chances are that you will not wind up the proverbial scapegoat.

 Kodi Barth teaches journalism at United States International University-Nairobi.
If you have seen questionable content in the press, write to kodi@kodibarth.com
Website: www.kodibarth.com/

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