Renowned columnist Philip Ochieng biased against Standard

Philip Ochieng, the renowned columnist at the Nation Media Group, comes across as a Standard newspaper hater.

His 'Mark My Word' column in the Saturday Nation is hardly complete without a jibe at The Standard newspaper over alleged errors that make him bristle.

Reading this column, one may be forgiven for thinking only competitors of the paper he writes for should be picked out for criticism when it comes to mutilating the Queen's language.

Mercifully, that is not the case and Mr Ochieng's enthusiasm in picking on The Standard when the paper he writes for, and others carry their fair share of grammatical errors on any given day, is apparent.

Newspapers should not be used to maliciously portray competitors in bad light, for then, it would foment bad blood and degenerate into a worthless contest with no victor. Those in the media, in any case, aspire to greater ideals espoused through fair comment.

Furthermore, every paper has its own internal quality control mechanisms. Additionally, many of the papers also have Public Editors who take care of complaints about misrepresentation, wrong captions et cetera.

Mr Ochieng should therefore use these established channels to lodge his complaints rather than deride The Standard incessantly.

While Mr Ochieng's concerns for the falling standards in English in the country are genuine, and must jolt educators into doing something positive to arrest the downward spiral, his constant jibes at the competition come across as a case of sour grapes. What informs his vitriol against young journalists trying hard to learn the ropes?

Mr Ochieng has a career spanning over 50 years and nothing in this world can convince me his first writings as a journalist reflected the same perfection he presents to the world today. He should help his readers improve their English without being caustic.

I am not holding brief for any journalist guilty of poor language. Journalists must strive to be perfect or come as close as possible. There is nothing as exasperating as a badly written, badly captioned story in a national newspaper presented in bad English.

But Mr Ochieng understands better than the average Kenyan that hurried journalists and sub-editors don't have the luxury of editing and re-editing their own stories as columnists do. Working to beat deadlines sometimes has its toll on the final copy.

In constantly singling out sub-editors, it is as if Mr Ochieng is unaware of Revise Editors whose work it is to have a refined copy before stories are published. But even with them, there are challenges; to err is human.

On the flip side, I get an automatic mental shutdown every time I open a newspaper and the name Philip Ochieng confronts me. I get migraines from trying to decipher what he writes about; mythology, prepositions, synonyms, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, nouns and some words that I am only forced to believe are English.

When he throws in Latin, I am kaput. Poor folk like me with zero mastery of the English language cannot keep pace with him; he is the obfuscator extraordinaire. You can grant him that.

Finally, I must thank Mr Ochieng for casting me headlong into the world of writing with a misrepresentation he made in one of his opinion pieces in 2000 when he wrote, inter alia 'the Maragoli, like their Luo neighbours, do not circumcise'.

My rebuttal of his contention was my first published opinion in the Daily Nation; I have never looked back since then. Thank you Mr Ochieng for inadvertently helping me find my vocation.