Bias against Catholic priest
In the coverage of the coronavirus, we have been treated to a rag-tag of news headlines that border on incitement and character assassination.
A case in point is the coverage of the embattled Catholic priest, Rev Fr Richard Oduor, a liturgy student at the Rome-based Pontifical University of Sant’Anselmo.
We read screaming headlines of killer priest, reckless priest and so on, and how he travelled from Rome to South Africa and later to Kenya, giving a false narrative that the priest was on an infection spree, putting to risk even the lives of the flock he leads, including his rural people.
Pictures were shared online of how he led mass at the funeral in Ugunja with Christians lining up to partake of the Holy Communion.
We were also treated to stories of more than 10 places the priest allegedly visited in a span of two days “after defying orders” to self-quarantine.
In a recent telephone interview with a local radio station in Kisumu and later by ACI Africa, the narrative given by the priest paints a totally different picture from the one created by the media.
It emerges that the priest was not the main celebrant at the Ugunja funeral and never gave Holy Communion.
Besides, the media used old photos taken during Fr Oduor’s ordination to justify the negative reports.
— Joe Okore, Maseno University
Is ‘Nation’ the weak link?
I don’t usually offer opinions or even letters to the editor to our dailies as I often note the contributions of others have far more merit than the musings of an overburdened healthcare professional.
But today, March 23, 2020, I felt it’s my duty to point out the glaringly obvious inconsistencies in what the Daily Nation preaches and what it practises!
The splash headline running across the front page is “Church, the weak link”.
I continued to leaf through the paper as one normally does when one gets a break in the course of a busy day.
I had a fairly light day (due to Covid-19 concerns) and got home to play with the kids, look at the homework that wasn’t done and, just before retiring, read the newspaper.
Something caught my eye on page 5, but I gave it no serious attention — until I came to page 34 (“Monday Pictorial”).
Here we are in the midst of a pandemic that is forcing us to change our lives, yet that very significant page depicted various Kenyans in extremely proximity of each other.
All pictures showed Kenyans gleefully smiling at the camera, standing at less than two metres apart!
And, on page 6 there’s a highlighted box titled “Virus Transmission” placed alongside the story headlined “East Africa records surge in infections”.
The first bulleted point says the virus can be transmitted “between people who are in close contact with one another (within 2m)”.
All the nine photographs in the “Monday Pictorial” unwittingly pour cold water on the newspaper’s message on the importance of reducing coronavirus transmission through social distancing.
Maybe I was overreacting. But surely, a newspaper of such repute as the Nation would not have more than 50 per cent of its photographs feature individuals less than two metres apart during the global Covid-19 infection pandemic?
I counted. There were about 56 photographs in total, excluding advertisements and authors’ photographs, published on that day.
And no fewer than 34 depicted people in proximity of one another. This includes a picture on page 5 of Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe and two other officials standing close to each other in front of a podium.
It occurred to me that maybe we may need to ask our media houses to see how they can play a role in these times.
Reporting the news is key and vital to the country; it helps us in coming to grips with this disease.
And there rests a responsibility for our media houses. They should not be tacitly, or unwittingly, encouraging the portrayal of images that promote the coronavirus transmission.
— Argwings Harun, Nairobi
Thank you for publishing “The impact of the coronavirus outbreak is likely to be severer on PWDs” (Daily Nation, March 25, 2020). It was well received by our community.
