On Tuesday night KTN aired an exposé of what the station called ‘digital brothel: Lesbianism for entertainment surrounds young girls in urban households’. The story was also dubbed ‘Sex in the City’ and revolved around young women pleasuring themselves in front of webcams for paying clients based all over the world.
In their online platform, KTN summed the programme thus: “It’s a vice declared illegal in many parts of the world including Kenya; but one that nonetheless thrives despite growing concern. ... KTN’s Timothy Otieno highlights a syndicate of lesbianism for entertainment that has encompassed young girls in urban households. The online audience of rich foreigners reportedly pay a lot of money but the young Kenyan girls used for these activities get peanuts...”
By all standards, this was a disturbing phenomenon particularly because it not only involves young ‘trafficked’ and ‘exploited’ women but because it also raised several issues relating to journalistic values of ‘good’ taste, accuracy, and respect for privacy. It also raised issues of media exploitation and trauma.
In short, the story begs several questions, among them: Did KTN care about the women’s privacy? Did it empathise with their situation? Was (and could) the station be exploiting them for ratings and attendant commercial purposes? Could the attendant public concern, anxiety, fear and anger be justified?
Let’s first consider the ‘facts’ as they were presented in the story. The story tracks Happy Moraa who is apparently an ‘ex-member’ of a group of girls who engage in sex, mostly pleasuring themselves, for an online ‘perverted’ clientele. They sometimes use sex toys. For their ‘services” the girls are paid between Sh10,000 and Sh15,000 a month. The story is undoubtedly of great ‘public interest’ given that trafficking and exploitation are both immoral and criminal.
The Advocates for Human Rights posit that “trafficking in persons is an increasing problem that involves both sexual and labour exploitation of its victims. Trafficking affects all regions and the majority of countries in the world. Both men and women may be victims of trafficking, but the primary victims are women and girls, the majority of whom are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Traffickers primarily target women because they are disproportionately affected by poverty and discrimination, factors that impede their access to employment, educational opportunities and other resources.
“Women may become victims of trafficking when they seek assistance to obtain employment...Traffickers prey on women’s vulnerable circumstances and may lure them into crime networks through deceit and false promises of decent working conditions and fair pay...women are subjected to physical violence, sexual assault and rape, battery, imprisonment, threats and other forms of coercion.”
The story dealt with many of the issues mentioned above and was definitely worth the effort. Only it should have been done better, and thought about the consequences of victim exposure. Besides moralising, the story could be part of the growing control culture espoused by people like Ezekiel Mutua. For him, this was part of a foreign conspiracy to spread ‘depravity, perversion, immoral values’ in Kenya.
“While poverty may have contributed to [this]...the main influence is the foreigners who are coming here disguised as business people, as tourists and luring our girls into perversions that are promoted in the West,” Mutua said. “These kind of things are not only alien, unacceptable, depravity of values and debilitating levels of perversion...It borders on immorality that is completely in contradiction of our values as a society...”
Mutua’s words may be interesting sound bites but they are sensationalist and bereft of truth. While it could be true that foreign ‘business people’ and ‘tourists’ are ‘sources’ and ‘supporters’ of the ‘depravity’, there was no evidence to support the claims. Unless that was removed from the final piece.
Further, the story itself failed the ethical journalism test. This is particularly because the story showed the faces and thus revealed the identity of the victims who claimed they had been forced into the acts for survival. Generally, victims of trafficking are 'traumatised' by their experience despite the girls' claims that they were happy with the work under the prevailing (economic and social) conditions. Essentially, journalists are expected to know (or at least think about) the consequences of their reports upon vulnerable groups.
The media must guard against sensationalism and moral panics, however interesting the story is. There is little doubt that the girls would suffer further vilification and trauma as a consequence of KTN’s story.
The media owes such victims a duty of care. As victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking, they deserve better media treatment and protection. To expose them to public ridicule and vilification is not only immoral but also against journalistic values and some provisions of the Code of conduct for the practice of journalism in Kenya.
The Code says that the media should “not identify victims of sexual assault or publish material likely to contribute to such identification.” I use this because Happy (and the other girls) were ‘forced’ into the practice by exploitative criminal leeches.
In this context, it is important that journalists conduct thorough investigations to ensure their stories contain sufficient evidence to back their claims so as not to create deviants who are in the first place ‘vulnerable’ and ‘exploited’. Besides, the story was overly salacious and could not be said to adhere to conventions of ethical journalism.
The writer lectures at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Nairobi.
george.nyabuga@gmail.com
