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By Dan Okoth
I have killed a few snakes in my life. Some I did as a teenager herding my father’s cattle in the village (often with an African Writer’s Series novel in one hand and a sturdy stick in the other). Some snakes were small, others were green like the grass, blending their deadly beauty with the grass the cows relished.
I left their memories in the village for ants, birds of prey and other scavengers. But on becoming a journalist some years back, I had no idea I would be confronted with an entirely different brood of reptiles.
About this time three years ago, the then National Security minister John Michuki blurted that "if you rattle a snake, you must prepare to be bitten by it". That was his defence of the raid by hooded Government agents on Standard Group offices at night.
Later defences by the minister were to the effect that the raid had been conducted in the interests of national security. It turns out, as The Standard managing Editor Okech Kendo would say, that "police, as always, were acting on false intelligence".
As the Standard Group marked the raid on Tuesday, Media Owners Association chairman Linus Gitahi, also CEO of the Nation Media Group, said it is the business of journalists to rattle snakes. He cited the examples of the oil scandal, and the maize shortage.
But it was the Standard Group deputy chairman and strategy advisor, Mr Paul Melly, who brought out the most interesting angle. He commended Michuki’s forthrightness in admitting that it was the State that raided The Standard, burned newspapers, switched off KTN and carted away computers.
He then asked why the police chose to raid the group’s printing press that morning, when the biggest story was ‘The champions speak’ – referring to top KCSE candidates whose results had been released the previous day.
Clearly, in the land of humans, the candidates’ interviews were no threat to national security. Maybe the story is different in the land of snakes, where warm-blooded nosy journalists must be bitten at the heel.
In a case of ‘reverse content analysis’, Melly asked what story the police thought The Standard and KTN would publish. Content analysis examines what is published; reverse content analysis examines what should have been, but somehow, didn’t make it to the papers.
By the raid, the hooded police and state agents acknowledged that journalists had outdone them, so they had to be stopped by sheer venom. It fits well with investigative journalism, which all reporting strives to be – unearthing that which is deliberately hidden.
Sometimes readers of the newspaper Michuki bit so hard claim he is "one of the most hardworking ministers". And the readers sometimes also praise Attorney General Amos Wako, despite a report of the parliamentary select committee indicating he was in an intelligence briefing session where it was decided to deport the Arturs – ostensibly to enable them escape justice.
It is difficult to know if journalists have told the entire snake story. If they have, the serpentine side did not slither out long enough. Otherwise the alleged threat to national security would have been obvious.
But who was the snake Michuki referred to? Could it have been the Artur brothers whose story The Standard was exposing? Could it have been the police? Was it Michuki himself? Was it the government or ‘the big man’?
Just as Michuki relied on the police to carry out his national duties – whatever they were – journalists rely on tipsters. On a good day, when the time is ripe and the warm sun is out, perhaps the good in his heart will make him that tipster.
I have my pen and notebook ready.
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