The picture splashed on the front page of Tuesday’s issue of the Standard was the kind that sparks huge debate about the journalism ethics on privacy. Thick with irony, this was a photojournalism piece depicting everything public people hate about the press: reporters who don’t go away; overzealous gadflies who don’t know when to stop; vultures who prey on innocent people’s privacy.

These are the kind of epithets public figures would slap on the subject of Tuesday’s picture. The caption said it was a Standard journalist atop the maroon saloon car, peering over a 12-foot stone wall into a private compound with the demeanour of a man desperate for a scoop. A scoop because the forbidding wall in Nairobi’s up-market estate of Lavington was said to hide the woman who could end Senator John Kerry’s chances of becoming president of the United States. The woman, identified as Alexandra Polier, 24, is said to have given a kiss-and-tell story about her and Senator Kerry to an American TV station in December.

To the average eye, the picture of a journalist peering over that fence in the hope of spotting the purported lover girl was an illustrated invasion of privacy. Local and international journalists camped at the gate for hours but were denied access. A guard at the gate reportedly said he had firm instructions not to open the gate to journalists or strangers. And Ms Polier is herself quoted by the Nation on Tuesday saying, "I am in Kenya with my fiancé visiting his family, and we ask that the Press respects our privacy and leave all of us alone."

It was the perfect setting for debate on the right to privacy.

Studies over the past decade have indicated that the public have serious doubts about the news media’s priorities and the ways in which they exercise the globally acknowledged right to privacy. A staggering 80 percent of the urban population thinks the press bluntly ignores people’s privacy, according to Alison Alexander and Jarice Hanson in their book, Taking Sides, Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Mass Media and Society. And nearly every private citizen thinks the press unfairly hounds public people.
The crux of the matter is that a damaging erosion of Press credibility with the public is on the increase. The manner in which the Kenyan Media has lately chased after former State House Comptroller Matere Kereri could be a case in point.

Yes, it was a matter of national interest when photojournalists caught on tape the First Lady snubbing the man who handled the president’s diary. But subsequent stories on Mr. Kereri have barely met the mark for sound journalism. When the former comptroller returned from his controversial London trip last month, the Media’s cat and mouse chase that ended at a hospital in the city outskirts came out with little, save for a massive embarrassment for Kereri. The chase continued for weeks, even into and out of petrol stations. Finally, last Wednesday, the Press people came to speak to an obliging Kereri at his new Integrity Centre offices, having been appointed the power regulator boss. And a reporter shot one question that critics would easily grade as frivolous. How was Kereri’s relationship with Mrs Kibaki? The former comptroller looked at the reporter for a while without saying a word. He then stretched his hand, turned round the microphone and noisily pushed it away.

The clip made for great entertainment at news hour. And here seems to be the problem.
This kind of news increasingly suggests that entertainment values are replacing news values in many of our newsrooms. This is escalating to the point where citizens buy the newspaper every morning and sit down to news bulletin every evening, only to be treated to an embarrassing spectacle of reporters grasping at straws and stretching non-issues thin. What happened to the professionals charged with informing the nation about issues of the day?

A press that incessantly chases after tabloid stuff at the expense of real issues is setting the nation up for wholesale gossip. This is the path trodden by reporters who are increasingly accused of meddling in people’s privacy.

By all means, get the story that the people have a right to know. While you’re about it, thought, be firm but gentle. “Politeness will get you a long way,” Columbia University journalism professor Helen Benedict tells every class of student reporters. It is the firm but polite reporter who commands respect in this trade.

Which is why there is another side to this argument.

The journalist is a privileged observer wondering the world recording what people do. The reporter documents social behaviour, political shenanigans and the occasional war. The respected, effective reporter strives to be as genuinely compassionate as possible.

“A mother crying over the death of her daughter is not simply an image to be focused, a print to be made, and a picture to be published,” says Paul Martin Lester in his 1999 book, Photojournalism, an Ethical Approach. “The mother's grief is a lesson in humanity… The lesson of humanity is why photojournalism is … worthy of the best thought and actions possible by its participants.”

Press people, in their most virgin definition, are records of history, not invaders of privacy. Most quarrel invoking privacy may actually be the result of a misunderstanding of this word, “privacy”. Privacy is what you get when you are in a private place. You do not get privacy in a public place. Kenyan law recognizes this in as much as there is no specific offence known as “invasion of privacy”, only trespass. For the journalist, anything seen in “public” can be recorded. But in “private,” such as in the reported case of the Kerry woman holed up in Lavington, the subject’s permission is needed.

“The logic is impeccable,” says Alexander and Hanson. “If you have sex with the curtains open, you lose your right to privacy and there is no hope of successfully suing a [journalist]. But, if a photographer broke into the house to get the picture, he would be punished for trespassing, and we would all cheer.”
The drama, however, begins when some editor decides that such stuff is newsworthy.

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

If you have seen questionable content in the press, write to kodi@kodibarth.com

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