By Eric Wamanji
Recently, our “professional, objective, free, fair, independent, fearless…” press splashed on their front pages a picture of CORD leader Mr. Raila Odinga taking selfies with some younglings. What a stroke of genius to publish the hottest picture in town when the three editors of the Daily Nation, The Standard and The Star shared nuanced journalistic principles. Truly, was it not the classic of great minds thinking alike?
But before you are razzle-dazzled by such magic, the truth is that the pictures were most likely a product of an engineering effort fashionable in newsrooms world over.
Just wondered why it is the same photographer, a resident snapper at ODM
who captured the moment?
What this tells us is that the news you get, is not necessarily a natural neutral journalistic product but a wheedled good by the moneyed, the elite and the savvy media strategists who are not on the employ of the news media, but have a strong hand in manipulating how your news is produced, packaged and of course, how you perceive reality – which is constructed.
ODM’s communication wonk mused to the Nairobi News that papers must have sold out. He also mentioned something “coincidence.” Really? He cannot admit, but such outcomes rise from massive telephone calls and…(**wink).
Folks, ODM scooped a prize because, page one, and certainly any journalistic product ought to be (at least in principle) sacred like an altar.
Unconscious transfer
To image gurus, the picture’s subtext is profound. In semiotics, the “Raila and “Babes” selfie is a potent effort in reengineering age. Raila’s detractors have stubbornly popped the age factor arguing he is past his sell-by date for presidency. But, by associating with the youth he hopes that the youthful streak will rub-off on him in what psychologists call “unconscious transfer.” More so, the picture is powerful because he looked like a stallion amid mares…well, more of this semiotic analysis for another day.
But let’s go back to media engineering.
World over, the manipulative prowess of the elite on the media is well entrenched. And the elite have an army of savoir-faire operatives adept at coining the right word, the right phrase and to snap the right shot. These savvy chaps are smooth operators whose tentacles are intricately tendrilled in newsrooms, virtual sphere and social networks.
In their book, Media Power Politics David Paletz and Robert Entman posit that, “by granting elites substantial control over the content, emphases, and flow of public opinion, media practices diminish the public’s power.” And therefore, “the mass media are often the unwitting handmaidens of the powerful.”
Indeed, its not Palez and Entaman who have this curious analysis of our news media, and its disposal to the elite for manipulation. Sociologist Charles Write Mills in 1956 noted as such in his book aptly called, The Power Elite. Mills analysed elite’s penchant for controlling if not owning the news media.
One of my favorite scholars, Jurgen Habermas, he of the Structural Tansformation of the the Public Sphere fame also faulted the newsmedia for fundamentally playing to the hands of politicians and the advertisers. In fact, it is Habermas who fancied a new virtual public sphere for a thriving democratic enterprise.
Indeed, even the discourses in the newsmedia are cherry-picked to at least suit the whims of the powerful. It appears that the ideal fourth estate of Edmund Burke’s dream finally fell to the altar of money and the powerful. Do you remember when the New York Times changed its slogan From Fourth Estate to Real Estate? What the times was basically telling us that the media ceased to exist as prophets but for profits.
It is why the citizenry needs to know that the media is neither designed for the hoi polloi nor is it even meant for our ignorant middleclass. The media is devised to pursue the interest of the elite in manufacturing consent from the masses and romp home profits from the consumerist and the esteem-deficient middle class.
In fact, William Hamiliton, then owner of the Wall Street Journal quipped thus: “A newspaper is a private enterprise owing nothing whatever to the public, which grants it no franchise. It is therefore affected with no public interest. It is emphatically the property of the owner who is selling a manufactured product at his own risk.”
Meantime, ODM’s Raila and Babes selfie, takes trophy.
Mr Wamanji is a Public Relations & Media expert. ewamanji@yahoo.co.uk follow: @manjis