The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) ruling was long-awaited. Probably the question was why the judges were taking their sweet time since the completion of the conclusion of the submissions. The case had been initially filed at the High Court, then appealed, and appealed again.

Maybe the media got fatigued in the process. As a country, we have been on this matter of BBI for a while now. But the news is always news and journalists need to be prepared to tell it afresh at every turn. The ruling at the Supreme Court was yet another turn. Overall, the Kenyan media made a poor job of reporting it. The issues of contention kept evolving as the case moved through the legal pipeline. By the time it arrived at the Supreme Court, the judges had distilled these contentious issues to seven.

At the risk of being overly simplistic, the seven issues are reducible to the following: whether the basic structure is applicable in Kenya, whether the President initiated BBI and where that is acceptable, thirdly whether BBI was the place for the creation of the 70 constituencies, and whether the President enjoys immunity.

The remaining three were whether there had been public participation in BBI, whether the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC ) had a quorum when it attended to the BBI issue, and whether a referendum should have single or multiple questions. These were the issues that the seven judges were required to render opinions on. They easily dispensed with the last one by simply saying that it was a premature question. Some would have thought otherwise, but hey, the seven are the judges.

The first issue really was the one with the farthest-reaching consequence. If the Supreme Court judges had agreed that the basic structure applied in Kenya, then it would have meant that Kenya took a very restrictive approach to change the Constitution. This is not only a matter of interest to Kenyans but to legal scholars as well.

The other issues were important but probably not as critical as this one. There was a consensus among the judges, too many people’s relief, that basic structure did not apply to Kenya. Maybe the other critical issue was the immunity of the President. This is important because it has a bearing on the boldness of the resident to act while in office.

Journalism is too often, and particularly in today’s world, a game of soundbite. What are the quotable quotes that reporters can get from sources in relation to the judgement? Sometimes quotes are easy to come by, public service journalism should look for these quotes, yes, but give the public more than the sound bites.

This requires reporters to analyse the subject and break it down for the listeners. The average listeners lack sophistication and expect the subject to be as simple as possible. What we had in the reportage of the Supreme Copurt verdict is a situation of journalists reducing the judgement simply to who lost and who won.

In this there were the supposed two leaders of the opposing sides. The pro BBI side had Raila Odinga and the President. On the opposing side were the Deputy President and his Kenya Kwanza Alliance. Rivalry between these two sides, and who wins, is less important compared to understanding the implications of the ruling.

Before one could decide who won, it was critical to analyse the seven issues, assess their criticality to our nationhood, and use that as a basis to render to educate the readers and the viewers. As already pointed out, some of the issues of contention had implications beyond BBI. How did the ruling pan on the critical issues, and what is the implication of the ruling? There was unanimity on some of the issues among them including the number seven and number one issues.

Is BBI therefore dead as rendered by the majority of the media? What are the gains from the ruling? This is the function that journalism ought to carry in society, and as regards the BBI ruling, the Kenyan media have done poorly.

— The writer is the dean of, School of Communication, Daystar University