March 16, 2007
Kenya's web watchdog
Below is a link to the first of four articles I wrote for the latest BBC Focus on Africa Magazine. The photo shows the layout of another.
Kenya: Web WatchdogIt all got too much for Ory Okolloh when Kenya's members of parliament voted to give themselves a sizable pay rise in 2003, soon after the last national elections.
"They were getting all this money - but we had no idea what they were doing to earn that money," said the 30-year-old lawyer and member of Kenya's burgeoning blogging scene.
As you will see, none of the pieces are about Ethiopia.
The reason is that The Ministry of Information here only lets foreign journalists work for one news organisation at a time. As you can see below, I am signed up with Reuters in Addis. If I want to do anything for anyone else, like the BBC, I have to make sure there isn't a hint of a mention of Ethiopia. Correspondingly, because Reuters places so much importance on the dateline (the bit at the beginning of the story that mentions the place where the story was written in brackets) the stuff I do for Reuters can only be about Ethiopia. It all fits. But sometimes life here can be very complicated.
Posted by aheavens at March 16, 2007 9:01 AM
Comments
What do you expect from a country of 79 million with only one TV channel! It is not that we couldn't but that we are not allowed to! We are all caught up with rules some $#@&* write! What can you do?!?
You should actually be thankful that they didn't include blogging!
Posted by: Minte at March 16, 2007 4:06 PM
Congrats, I will check out the article on the magazine. I also found your point about how the ministry of information or (disinformation) controls journalists (both foreign and domestic).
It just makes me want to scream when i think about how much peopla can contribute and these morons that are in charge in addis abeba are stifling progress.
One day we will be free of them so that you can do what you want where you want it.
Posted by: HNT at March 17, 2007 12:12 PM
[...] An excellent piece on Ory Okolloh's Mzalendo, a ground-breaking project to monitor the Kenyan parliament [...]
Posted by: Abdurahman at March 18, 2007 9:32 AM
Dear Andrews; A week or so ago, you implied that the world has not forgotten the kidnapped Ethiopians in the Afar region. I wish it were true.
Could you please do more on this using your media outlets and resources.
Thank you
Sam..
Posted by: Sam at March 18, 2007 7:54 PM