The uneasy relationship between Kenya’s political elite and mainstream media is evolving.

Where politicians once grudgingly courted news outlets as necessary evils, they now increasingly treat them as irrelevant obstacles to be dismissed, bypassed or financially starved into submission.  

This change comes at a difficult moment for traditional media. The politically powerful have discovered they can reach millions directly through social media without editorial gatekeepers questioning their storylines.

Meanwhile, they’re very much aware of the media’s financial vulnerabilities, which have deepened dramatically in recent years. 

As someone who grew up reading newspapers when print was king, I was shocked to learn the current circulation figures for Kenya’s top daily newspapers.

Though these numbers are a closely guarded secret, reports indicated significant declines that started during COVID-19 – when advertising revenue dipped significantly because many businesses cut ad budgets during the economic downturn – and continue today.  

One major newspaper reported circulation drops of between 30 per cent and 50 per cent at the height of pandemic-related movement restrictions.

The company’s financial reports showed that print advertising revenue declined by about 46 per cent in the first half of 2020. Its main competitor experienced similar declines, estimated at 35-45. 

Reduced revenues prompted layoffs and salary cuts. Several major media houses reduced staff and cut pay (reportedly 20-50 per cent in some cases). 

Some media houses will continue pretending that they are still doing with fewer resources what they used to do in the days of plenty, but dwindling paginations show that the opposite is true.

Nearly all newspapers reduced page counts or merged sections to manage costs. 

Though circulation had started to recover by late 2021 and early 2022, it generally remained below pre-pandemic levels, as the global health emergency accelerated the already recognised trend of declining print readership in favour of digital platforms. 

This economic weakening created vulnerabilities that the politically powerful have eagerly exploited. Government advertising has become increasingly critical to media houses’ survival, with growing evidence that this financial leverage is influencing editorial decisions at some outlets. 

Against this backdrop, consider the extraordinary statement issued by the State House on March 31 rejecting a newspaper story published that same day as “thinly veiled propaganda”.

The details of that story aside, what’s revealing is the tone – politicians and government functionaries (some former media workers themselves) seem almost gleeful about the industry’s difficulties, their language sometimes reaching comical absurdity. 

Trumpian hyperbole regarding news media has made it to Kenyan shores.

That press release, posted on X, echoed familiar refrains about the newspaper’s “waning relevance”, “disappearing readership”, “thinning circulation”, and “plummeting readership” – language strikingly similar to what we have heard from the US president and other right-wing American politicians. 

Ironically, some of these gratuitously scornful press statements issued by government offices are drafted by refugees from a media industry weakened partly by government policies intended to financially squeeze disfavoured news outlets even further for political reasons.

One cannot blame them entirely – they must eat too. 

This pattern of bitter dismissal toward specific stories or media houses shouldn’t be misinterpreted as a wholesale rejection of the media.

Even the most cynical politicians understand that a functioning media is essential to Kenya’s fragile democracy. They recognise that the media is useful in advancing their political careers. 

What they truly fear is not the media itself, but journalism that digs beneath carefully built political narratives, asks uncomfortable questions, and serves the public rather than power.

These attacks on “failing” media appear to be celebrating its demise but they are an attempt to accelerate it.

Only that those aggrieved by news coverage can no longer just storm publishers’ offices with hired guns, slap journalists around and seize printing equipment. 

— The writer is a Sub-Editor with People Daily