As the battle for political power tightens, media houses are bracing themselves to reap from the billions being splashed by various candidates and parties. A vicious fight is also going on among Kenyan media houses seeking to have the biggest share of the campaign money and awareness creation by IEBC and other bodies.
It is estimated that more than Ksh50 billion would be spent during the election period, most of it on advertising, promotions and awareness creation. This means a huge chunk of it will end up in media coffers.
Each media house has created room for politics to court political advertisements, with some even launching special programmes to attract viewership and advertisements as well as paid-for interviews. Actually, most interviews on Special Programmes are sponsored by the candidates in question.
With giant media houses struggling to make profits, which has seen them fire a lot of their journalists lately to cut costs, a general election is always harvest time for most of them.
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The race for political advertisement revenue started with Royal Media Services(RMS) early this year, when it employed close to 100 agents countrywide to tap campaign revenue through their ethnic outlets.
Recently, Mediamax, owned by President Uhuru Kenyatta and deputy William Ruto, launched a Kalenjin Tv and radio, riding on campaign spending. The outlets are meant to attract adverts that target Kelenjin voters.
Ensuring fair play
Nation Media Group(NMG) and the Standard Group (SG) have already positioned their print and broadcast outlets for the campaigns and money has already started flowing in with documentaries by the Jubilee administration showing its achievements. The IEBC and political parties have also been constant advertisers.
Yet every carnival comes with some rules to ensure fair play, especially during an election in an ethnically polarised environment like Kenya. NMG, Standard and Mediamax, have already published campaign regulations for political advertising for candidates, political parties, coalitions, support and lobby groups and agencies intending to take out political advertising.
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The regulations have additional clauses to curb extremism in the political arena and reduce political sabotage. According to the regulations, advertisements will be rejected if they contain obscene or profane language or pictorial representation that, when taken in context, tends to or is likely to expose an individual or a group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability.
This is geared at limiting incitement or content that could spark ethinic resentment or profiling which were responsible for the 2007/08 post-election violence.
As per the Nation rules, unwarranted attacks on the election agendas of rivals will not be tolerated, among others.
“Advertisements shall be rejected outright if they contain unwarranted attacks on the election agendas of rivals. Candidates/parties, coalitions, sponsors, lobbyists shall, however, be allowed to promote their own election agendas,” stated the regulations.
The giant media houses also promised to sieve out adverts that touch or invoke religious sentiments, especially the name of God. The adverts will be rejected if they are obscure and touting bizarre messages, and invoking the name of God.
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Media houses will not air ads containing press cut-outs/rug-outs and archived footage except where they are used to rebut or clarify claims that have been made publicly and were reported in mainstream media.
In a cunning move, political advertisements in newspapers shall only appear after the Opinion pages, journalistically known Editorial pages, save for PD, who have not restricted placement of political ads. This gives priority to national news and nonpolitical ads and will avert a situation where well-heeled parties or candidates book all the prime slots to lock out their rivals for the entire campaign period.
[crp]
