CNN roasted for claiming Caucasian woman discovered whales in Kenya

International broadcaster CNN has been on the receiving end after reporting that a Caucasian woman from London discovered whales in Kenya.

An article on CNN's website says that former London lawyer Jane Spilsbury, who moved to Kenya with her husband, heard tales from local residents about whales and dolphins and took it upon herself to document the mammals, whose existence local residents had said they had known about for more than 30 years.

“Up until recently, most travellers, and even some locals, had no inkling of the aquatic mammals that occupy or pass through Kenya's waters,” says the story titled “The woman who found whales in Kenya” by Ashleigh Stewart.

Spilsbury told CNN: “We literally came from a point of zero information and zero awareness, it seems ridiculous to imagine that nobody knew that the dolphins or whales existed here”.

She said: “We were amazed, because no one knew there were dolphins out there, not even the Kenya Wildlife Service”.

Casual way

Spilsbury says she learned about humpback whales in a similar casual way.

“It was as simple as talking to a fisherman at the bar and asking if he’d seen any humpback whales and he said 'sure, we've seen them for 30 years',” she says.

But according to Turtle Bay Beach Club in Watamu, Kilifi, humpback whales, travel annually in their thousands from the Antarctic to Kenya to breed and have their calves “in our safe tropical waters”.

Both migrations peak between July and September, which means that Kenya hosts the “Twin Migration”, a unique wildlife phenomenon, incorporating both savannah and sea safaris.

This is not the first time CNN has angered Kenyans. In 2015, Kenyans on Twitter roasted the broadcaster for a report on President Barack Obama’s visit to the country, in which they said he was heading to a “TERROR HOTBED”.

Here is what some Kenyans had to say about the whale article.