What could explain this disconnect? \u201cSocial media has made everyone sort of their own journalist, so individual reporting is on the rise,\u201d said panelist Wayua Muli, journalist, editor and lead of new ventures at Nation.Africa. \u201cFor example, if someone witnesses something and records and uploads it, the journalistic process is bypassed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTherefore when newsrooms come in and report something different from what was uploaded on social media, then the disconnect happens and trust is questioned. The mismatch in information contributes a great deal to this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Warah believes that trust can be regained by reviving the quality of great storytelling and especially investigative journalism. \u201cAudiences are also tired of toxic politics which dominate the news.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For BBC editor and journalist Bonney Tunya, \u201cpeople want three things in their media consumption diet,\u201d he points out. \u201c One, tips \u2013 something as mundane as how to make banana bread; second, holding power to account, such as investigative journalism does; and third, entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps there is an opportunity for the news media to take influencer culture seriously \u2013 the tendency for journalists is to dismiss the whole gamut of \u201ccontent creators.\u201d In the Kenyan context, it has also meant only paying lip service to youth culture and youth trends, when in reality half of the Kenyan population today was born after the year 2000, and young people under the age of 35 make up nearly three quarters of the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cInfluencers seem to have figured out the language of the future; they have figured out how to engage with their audience in a way only they can. We need to ask what the audiences want instead of producing content that suites just us in the newsrooms, resulting a situation where audiences don’t feel heard,\u201d said Tunya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, he believes that there is a lot of hope in good stories. \u201c[News] doesn’t have to be a scandal everyday for [it] to sell. We need to be bold enough as gatekeepers to make these choices that might seem to be against the grain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And for Warah, the most important thing is not to underestimate our readers. \u201cLet us not box them into categories then assume that they would only want to read certain things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our second #FutureorFuneral session explored trust in the Kenyan media, recognising that an inter-generational vantage point is crucial to understand the overt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,41],"tags":[58,56,61,38,57,59],"class_list":["post-16748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-futureorfuneral","category-media","tag-disinformation","tag-future-of-media","tag-influencers","tag-kenyan-media","tag-media-innovation","tag-trust-in-media"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tuwele.com\/baraza_update\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/5.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n