This may come to you as a shock. But there are times when a journalist is actually required to hide the identity of his sources and subjects – even if they don’t ask for it.

For unexplainable reasons, however, Nation TV this week tramped all over this tenet.

It happened on Flipside, the Monday feature that runs after the 9pm news. It was a jarring expose of life in one of Nairobi’s sprawling slums, Korogocho. For Kenyans living on the healthier side of the economic divide, Nation reporters ruined appetites with the powerful clip that began with the story of a middle-aged woman who is permanently drunk. Then, the camera rolled to show a ramshackle with a few black stones and nothing else, which two women called their kitchen. (We’ll get back to these two women in a while.) Shortly, there was the picture of a tree plunk suspended between the banks of an open sewer, which the residents called latrine. On this lone plunk residents had learnt to execute a perfect balance, squatting to defecate into the sewer, which flowed into the Nairobi River.

It was the story of a people living at the bottom of a dump.

But perhaps more shocking was the clip that showed the two women with a ramshackle for a kitchen talk about their double career – trafficking in illicit brew and prostituting. Yes, every night, the two women sold their bodies to about 10 men. When business was good, they drew up to Sh200. That’s approximately Sh20 per client. And they talked about it like you would talk about feeding rabbits.

But let’s stay with the journalistic point in the heartrending story. Namely, the identification of the two women, on camera. Nation did not only name them, the channel showed to the country the desperate women’s faces.

And that is when journalism ethics came knocking.

Journalists are trained to be forthright with both their sources and their audience. Only in critical rarities where an overwhelming good stands to gain may investigative journalists opt to go under cover. Ordinarily, however, reporters are required to operate in the open. In their 2001 book, “Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect”, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel have said that journalists must level with their sources. Reporters “should not lie or mislead their sources in the process of trying to tell the truth to their audiences.” The implication is that journalists are required to advise their subjects that whatever they are about to say is on the record.

The idea of being totally transparent is to impress upon subjects, obviously without scaring them, the gravity of what they are about to walk into. The whole nation will be watching. It is much like a police officer will read to a crime suspect his rights, just so the suspect knows it before he goes incriminating himself.

For subjects who crave the limelight, the chance to be on TV is actually a thrill. But there are two kinds of sources -- those with some education and those with little or no education. The former may be a sophisticated lot that understands the impact of media in society. It is this lot that frequently ask to speak off the record. When these guys won’t speak on the record, reporters are required to quickly weigh out a few factors. Namely, how crucial is this information? Does this subject’s identity actually need protection? Is there a source who will speak on record to complement or replace this one?

Whatever the verdict, the reporter ends up with two options. One: reiterate to the source that this will either be on record or “please give us someone else who will speak on record.” Two: accept the source’s request for anonymity and honour it.

But there are those guys who may not know that they need protection, like the Korogocho women. Clearly, these women could not fully appraise their situation. It did not hit them that they were blabbing to the world that they were breaking the law. Both prostitution and changaa trade are criminal acts in this country. Should those two women end up in court, it will be an open-and-shut case. They confessed before an entire whole nation. The reporters knew it. The subjects probably didn’t – or didn’t care.

But our reporters tend to capitalize on the ignorance of unsophisticated subjects who find themselves in newsworthy situations. In the Korogocho case, reporters may even be guilty of discrimination. Would they do a similar coverage to subjects resident in the upmarket suburbs of Lavington and Westlands?

It shouldn’t matter, however, where subjects live. The ignorant are a vulnerable lot, the kind reporters are required to approach with upped sensitivity. The principle is simple -- reporters are duty bound to protect the identity of vulnerable subjects, even if the subjects don’t give a hoot one way or the other.