‘Nation’ breaking news and the story of the boy who cried wolf

I think Magesha Ngwiri was being light-hearted when he wrote in his column: “Breaking News: Yesterday, May 13, senior programme producer with NTV, Kevin Gitau, wed his sweetheart, Cate Wanjiku, in a colourful ceremony....” A journalist getting married is no breaking news.

Not even if he were gay and of CNN’s Anderson Cooper fame. The tag “breaking news” is reserved only for important news that has just happened or is occurring or developing.

It should also be sufficiently newsworthy or urgent for a TV station to cut into its regular programming to broadcast the news item. Example: BREAKING NEWS: Retired President Daniel arap Moi is dead” (NTV, February 4, 2020).

Many Nation stories have been wrongly labelled as breaking news because the editor misjudged their importance or urgency. Or because the editor, perhaps, wants to sensationalise or dramatise the news.

Example: “BREAKING NEWS: Bodies of Mariam and daughter Amanda taken to the morgue”. The story of Mariam Kishenda and her child, who died when their car slipped off the Likoni ferry and plunged into the Indian Ocean, attracted national interest. But taking their bodies to the mortuary was a matter of course and not breaking news at all.

Obsession with the tag

Joseph Odongo, a communications consultant, says Kenya is “a nation of breaking news, a hotbed of scoops and beat stories where the media have us hooked to a maze of ‘hot topics’” (“Media’s obsession with breaking news leaves Kenyans the poorer”, Daily Nation, June 17, 2019).

Although he is more concerned with the lack of follow-up in reporting, editors’ obsession with the tag “breaking news” is of some concern.

When Nation.Africa tags news as ““BREAKING NEWS” or NTV cuts into regular programming to broadcast breaking news, it should be because the news is truly important and urgent.

One might not be able to say that about the following Nation.Africa stories that were tagged as breaking news. “BREAKING NEWS: French ‘human hen’ artist hatches first chick”, “BREAKING NEWS: Naija girls love Kenyan men” and “BREAKING NEWS: Not all men cheat”.

The first story is about a French artist who sat on chicken eggs until they hatched. The second claims ‘Naijan’ (another name for Nigerian) women love Kenyan men. The third is about relationships, in which the writer says not all men cheat on their partners. 

What was so urgent about these stories to tag them as breaking news?

I don’t subscribe to the Nation Breaking News service but Owino Otieno does. He tells me breaking news of questionable importance or urgency are sometimes broadcast by the service.

He cites “Body of Prof Magoha arrives in Yala” as a case in point. The death of the former Education cabinet secretary had already been reported as breaking news on NTV and other TV stations.

“The good professor died on January 24 and we were duly informed that burial was to take place in Yala on February 11. It could have been breaking news if the body failed to arrive! The ‘Breaking News’ is a premier service that costs money. It should be treated as such,” Mr Otieno says.

Breaking news is a concept that goes back to 1906. The American news agency Associated Press termed news that it designated as of “transcendent importance” as “Flash”. Other news organisations used similar terms, such as “Bulletin”, “Alert” and “Special Report”.

Today, “Breaking news” is the standard designation of such news. Other terms such as “Just in” and “Happening now” are also used but they don’t convey the full import of breaking news.

In TV news, the rule of thumb is that, if a news item doesn’t warrant the interruption of scheduled programming it’s not breaking news. The problem, of course, is that the tag “breaking news” is overused. When that happens, viewers may lose confidence in the designation of news as breaking news.

This brings to mind the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, one of the fables by Aesop. A young shepherd amuses himself by calling for help, saying a wolf is threatening his flock when there is no wolf. He cries wolf so often that when a wolf actually attacks, nobody comes to help.

Overusing the tag runs the risk of the public may not taking the media seriously when they designate news as breaking news.

Media to blame for behaving like spectator

Your editorial, “DP Gachagua’s divisive utterances a big shame” (Daily Nation, Feb. 21, 2023) was spot-on. 

However, in your commentaries on the posturing between the government and the opposition, your paper has hitherto adopted the attitude of a spectator watching boxers in a ring, being content with pointing out how one boxer has landed a punch that outfoxed the other. 

Instead of highlighting it and condemning it for what it is, you have tended to focus on the entertainment value of the sparring involved to sell your newspaper. It is no wonder that the perpetrators of these evils against democracy have only become bolder in their actions.

— Joseph Sitati

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Nothing new in NTV’s Ouko murder report

The mysterious murder of Robert Ouko that occurred 33 years ago continues to elicit a lot of speculation. It was meticulously planned and executed. It almost tore the country apart. 

It amazes me that investigations have always hit a dead end. Many of the key witnesses who would have shed light on what happened have died. They include the late minister’s brother Barack Mbaja, a top civil servant in President Daniel arap Moi’s government when the gruesome murder occurred.

So when the NTV investigative team went on the trail to unearth the killers, it was hoped that the long investigative story would be of much help. Unfortunately, what was aired on February 12 was an anticlimax. 

Everybody was glued to the TV that Sunday evening expecting to hear the bombshell. What, however, came out wasn’t what was expected. It was all that has been out there in the public domain all these years. 

The three-part long series was full of hearsay and innuendoes. Much of what was aired was picked up directly from the report of the Gor Sungu-led Parliamentary Select Committee that was formed to investigate the murder.

— Stephen Ngure

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Medal tables missing but good coverage

We are all very proud of Kenya’s achievement of taking first place overall in the World Cross Country Championships in Australia. Good coverage by the Nation. However, the medal tables were missing, giving the impression that only Kenya and Ethiopia were the participants.

— Mahendra Shah, Nairobi
 

The Public Editor is an independent news ombudsman who handles readers’ complaints on editorial matters including accuracy and journalistic standards. Email: [email protected]. Call or text 0721989264