Introduction
The corporatisation and financialisation of the media have had a tremendous impact on the media in Kenya since political and economic liberalisation took root in the early 1990s. The concept of ‘financialisation’ may be used interchangeably with the concept of ‘corporatisation’ of media industries to refer to a system of media production, distribution, ownership and funding of media companies that is dominated by corporations and governed by the capitalist imperatives of maximising profits for investors, stockholders and advertisers (Almiron-Roig 2011, 39). Kenya has experienced a rapid development of the media since the 1990s, which has resulted in structural changes in media organisations (Mwangi 2010; Odhiambo 2002; Ogola 2011). These changes have in turn influenced the ways in which journalists make their professional decisions. Although liberalisation has led to the growth of numerous media organisations in Kenya translating to more avenues for the citizens to air their views, the liberalised media environment has also facilitated the growth of media conglomerates such as the Nation Media Group (NMG), whose growth steadily rose from two newspapers in 1990 to the largest media house in East and Central Africa today (Ali 2010).
The issue of corporate interlocking in the media industry is not new. Critics have long argued about the possible adverse effects of ties between media and major non-media corporations. For instance, interlocking corporate directorships may lead to subtle, unconscious self-censorship or in other cases, the consequences may be manifest: for example reporters may be pressured, and stories unassigned or ‘killed’ after they have been written (Soontae and Jin 2005). But, although there has been much research on corporate interlocks in the media in the developed democracies, few studies have been conducted in developing democracies particularly in Africa to examine the impact of these corporate influences on journalistic ideals. Most studies in Kenya have focused on the impact of government control on journalistic ideals, but very few on the impact of the increasing corporate pressures on media performance and journalistic ideals. This study seeks to bridge that gap.
As Herman and Chomsky (2002) observe, dominant media firms such as the NMG are quite large businesses; they are controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to heavy constraints by owners and other market-profit-oriented forces. Like any other corporate entity, the NMG can arguably be said to focus on the pursuit of profits and the protection of shareholders' and owners' wealth. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with the pursuit of profits per se, it is not a value-neutral exercise. The pursuit of profits, especially in the media industry,
can have the effect – intended or not, of constraining the range of ideas and voices routinely found in the media … As a result, the views that dominate in the corporate media tend to be those that are compatible with a corporate worldview. (Croteau and Hoynes 2006, 177–178)
Owing to market pressures to maximise profits, media production is increasingly being commandeered by large corporations and being moulded to suit their interests and strategies (Golding and Murdock 2000).
In such cases, journalists may write news, but are themselves also ‘written by’ the discourses and practices of journalism. Journalism operates as a ‘system of meanings and common-sense understandings’ (Reese 2001, 183) that appear natural but are subject to various levels of influence, internally in news organisations and externally in the media's relationship to society. Individual journalists also work according to deeply ingrained professional routines that shape their coverage. Such routines and practices are naturalised and integrated into the organisational structures; with time, such practices become objectified, understood as ‘how things work’ rather than calculated managerial responses to profit imperatives (Jansen 2010, 13).
Newsroom routines and media organisational interests ultimately influence journalistic agency because media owners or their appointed top executives have the final say in what the organisation does (Shoemaker and Reese 1996, 163). Reese (2001, 180) defines routines as ‘patterned practices that work to organise how we perceive and function within the social world … [T]hose ongoing, structured, deeply naturalised rules, norms, procedures that are embedded in media work.’ Furthermore, power is also exercised in the organisational structures within which journalists work (181), although this power works implicitly rather than overtly, so as not to violate the strong professional notion of ‘objectivity’ (182).The notion of ‘objectivity’ itself is a controversial one, with a long history (cf. Ward 2006). It forms part of a value system that Reese (2001, 182) refers to as the ‘Extra-Media Level’, that is, how journalism is related to the wider society within which it operates. The norms, values and principles guiding media practices in specific contexts are negotiated between various stakeholders who also include government, advertisers, public relations, news sources, interest groups and other news organisations (182).
This study therefore sought to examine the impact of interlocking directorships, and owners' and shareholders' interests, on journalistic freedom in Kenya as they pursue what is often presented as their ideal normative role – the promotion of public interest. These pressures are not expressed in the form of explicit policies, but operate informally through implicit and unstated ‘silent’ policies. Using qualitative semi-structured interviews with practising journalists at the NMG, the study aimed to establish how interlocking directorships and the pressure to protect owners' and shareholders' interests lead to a tension between commercial interests and the ethical ideals of independence, impartiality and promotion of the public interest. A specific point of focus was the question of how journalists internalise commercial pressures in order to exercise self-censorship, thereby consensually complying with hegemonic notions of commercial success as a measure of good journalism.
Corporatisation and financialisation of the commercial media in Kenya
The concept of financialisation directs our attention to the capitalisation of the media industries alongside the traditional focus of critical political economy on media ownership, markets, regulation, commodification and digitisation among others (Winseck 2010, 366). The liberalisation and privatisation of the media in Kenya has led to corporatisation of the mass media (Ali 2010). Corporate interests have been noted to influence editorial decisions, often leading to biased, partial, distorted and less objective news (Nyabuga 2007). This corporate control is mainly exercised either through the corporate sponsorship of news and programmes or through advertising revenue. Corporate sponsors are large business conglomerates; they have numerous interests to protect and promote. Their influence is not therefore confined to the sponsored programmes but they take advantage of their privileged position in the relevant media through their public relations office to push for advertorial news to boost their image in the public eye (Nyabuga 2007).
Corporate ownership and control of the media has long been criticised on public interest grounds (Bagdikian 2000; Croteau and Hoynes 2006; Herman and Chomsky 2002; McManus 1992). McManus (1992, 1997) argued that in market-driven journalism, there is an inherent conflict between the logics of ‘maximising returns’ for the shareholders and ‘maximising public understanding’. In the new commercialised media environment, McManus observes that journalistic ethics relies less on codes and more on mechanisms for dealing with ‘the growing influences of forces outside the newsroom such as the executives of corporations that own news media, the interests of corporate “siblings” and the markets for investors, advertisers, sources and consumers’ (McManus 1997, 6).
While government censorship of the media reduced in the post-1990 liberalisation era in Kenya, market censorship through corporate influence seems to be on the rise, with most mainstream media such as the NMG focusing on vertical and horizontal integration, where corporate interests seem to have taken control. There has been an increasing tendency towards corporate monopolies through horizontal integration, mainly through cross-media ownership. As Pedro observes, in such a context ‘media products are merchandise, and as such, their value and capacity to yield a profit depends on the laws of the market – not on public interest, democratic values, or the satisfaction of public needs’ (Pedro 2011, 1875).
From a critical political economy perspective, corporate ownership and control of the media is a critical factor in explaining media production. Unlike the liberal-pluralist approach, which regards private ownership of the media as translating to media independence, critical political economy holds that private ownership largely integrates private media into the structures and logic of market power (Golding and Murdock 1973; Mosco 1996; Pedro 2011), which in turn muzzles media freedom through market censorship. The forces of media corporatisation can be said to have profoundly affected and influenced the Kenyan media and the NMG in particular in the post-liberalisation era both positively and negatively. On the one hand, the media has pluralised, though the diversity of outlets has not necessary translated to diversity of viewpoints owing mainly to cross-media ownership and competition for similar audiences. On the other hand, private media owners are increasingly pursuing profits and increasingly focusing on selling audiences to advertisers. Only stories that bring in or are likely to attract audiences that are desirable to advertisers, are fronted. Those that are not ‘client friendly’ do not see the light of day (Nyabuga 2007). The next section of this article therefore examines how shareholders' and owners' interests/wealth, interlocking directorships and the profit orientation of the NMG influence journalists' freedom in a manner that compromises their journalistic ethics.
Ownership and control at the Nation Media Group
The Nation Media Group (NMG) is the largest media conglomerate in East and Central Africa (Ali 2010; NMG 2012) and it cross-owns the following media in Kenya: the newspapers The Daily Nation (plus the Saturday and Sunday editions), The East African Newspaper (regional for East Africa), The Business Daily, The Daily Monitor (which is also published in Uganda), Taifa Leo (published in Kiswahili), The Citizen, The Africa Review and the Daily Nation online edition. The Group also has two TV stations: TV and Q-TV, and two radio stations: Easy FM and Q FM. The main shareholder, the Aga Khan, also has business interests in the education, health, hospitality, insurance and banking industries across the East African region.
Between 1990 and 2011, the NMG grew from two dailies (The Daily Nation, published in English plus the weekend editions, Saturday Nation and Sunday Nation, and Taifa Leo, published in Kiswahili) to be the largest media conglomerate in East and Central Africa, controlling a significant share in print, broadcast and online media as well as other non-media business interests such as N-Soko, which specialises in selling advertising space and Nation courier services.
Interlocking directorships at the Nation Media Group in Kenya
The media and other corporations share direct interests, for instance through interconnected boards of directors, strategic alliances, joint ventures or merchandising agreements (Mosco 1996). From the institutional analysis of the board of directors at the NMG, it was established that these directors are also directors in other non-media companies, some of which double up as major advertisers. The aim of the institutional analysis was to get background information on the professional qualifications of the management team (to establish if they are trained journalists or rather have a background in business), and the interlocking business and political interests of the board of directors and the executive team. The researchers then probed from the interviews to find out if and how the professional orientation of the management board and the interlocking directorships influence the ethical decisions of journalists at the individual and institutional levels. The researchers were also interested in establishing from the interviews who appoints the management board members and how this is done, and if this in any way influences the decisions of the journalists.
McNair (2003, 57) notes that ‘the mechanism by which proprietors can exert control is through their power to appoint key personnel … who become the proprietor's “voice” within the newsroom, ensuring that journalistic independence conforms to the preferred editorial line.’ The pressures and constraints from these appointed personnel to protect the business interests of the Establishment often strongly influence journalists to internalise the values of the news organisation that employs them and to become conditioned into particular institutional conventions (Richards 2004, 121). It can therefore be observed that although the media and media professionals control their own activities to some extent, they are constrained and directed at many points by more remote, sometimes powerful forces (Christians et al. 2009, 120).
According to the NMG Annual Report and Financial Statements 2012, the Board of Directors comprises 16 members. The role of the Board is to determine the company's policies and strategies, to monitor the attainment of the business objectives and to ensure that the company meets its obligations to the shareholders. The directors are also responsible for overseeing the Group's internal control systems. These controls are designed both to safeguard the Group's assets and to ensure the reliability of the financial information used within the business (NMG 2013). It is evident that the role of the Board is purely business oriented. We will therefore briefly examine the profile of three key board members (the Chairman, the Chief Executive Officer and the Chairman of the Editorial Committee) as outlined in the 2012 Annual Report in an attempt to establish their professional qualifications and their interlocking board of directorships in other companies.
The Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Group, Mr Wilfred Kiboro, is also a director of East African Breweries Limited and the Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank Kenya Limited as well as Wilfay Investments Limited. The Group Chief Executive Officer is Mr Linus Gitahi, who holds a Master of Business Administration from the United States International University and a Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) from the University of Nairobi. He is the Director of the Group's subsidiary companies and Property Development and Management Limited, an associate company. Mr Gitahi is a member of the Nominations, the Editorial and the Strategic Planning committees of the Group.
The Chairman of the Editorial Committee is Mr Francis Okomo Okello, who holds a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a Fellow of the Kenya Institute of Bankers. He is currently the Executive Director in charge of Legal and Corporate Affairs at the Industrial Promotion Services group of companies. Mr Okello is the chairman of Barclays Bank of Kenya Limited and also TPS Eastern Africa Limited (Serena Group of hotels and lodges), which are part of the non-media businesses of the main shareholder of the NMG, the Aga Khan.
It is evident that the top executives of the NMG are not trained journalists, but strategic corporate executives to oversee the business orientation of the Group. It was established from the interviews that the 16 members of the Board of Directors are handpicked by the main shareholder, the Aga Khan, and they are supposed to act as his ‘eyes and ears’ to ensure business prosperity of the group and subsidiary companies. From the interviews, it was evident that this strict business orientation of the Group is slowly but surely narrowing the gap between journalists and advertisers, bankers, financiers and industrial business people as more and more of these corporate executives sit on most of the main media boards of directors. This ‘new’ breed of media executives is clamouring for a new business model that would take into account the transformation experienced by the media sector against the background of the global economic crisis, exerting pressure to focus more on profit returns, sometimes at the expense of a public interest orientation.
While this business class keeps on looking for ways to make money with journalism (or through journalism), an increasing number of scholars, journalists and social activists all over the world – and even some political decision-makers – are raising their voices, calling for efforts to put capitalist profit aside and give priority to democracy (Winseck 2010). There are calls to preserve and protect the professional autonomy of journalists to pursue the ideal role of the media in society; to promote public interest. No matter how contentious the meaning of ‘public interest’ is, it is evident that public interest cannot be defined as solely or even primarily the capitalist business interest of the media owner. It was established through the interviews with NMG employees that all 16 members of the Board of Directors are also directors or chairs in other non-media companies. The study used this background information as a point of departure to find out from journalists how these interlocking directorships may influence them as they make their daily decisions.
Main shareholders in the Nation Media Group
As part of the institutional analysis, the researchers also examined the 10 main shareholders in the NMG in an attempt to establish how such shareholders' interests may compromise journalistic ethical ideals.
The top 10 shareholders are:
Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) with a total of 70,165,286 shares translating to 44.66% ownership;
Mr Amin Nanji Juma with a total of 15,686,175 shares translating to 9.98% ownership;
National Social Security Fund with a total of 4,556,180 shares translating to 2.90%;
John Kibunga Kimani with a total of 2,054,311 shares translating to 1.31%;
The Jubilee Insurance Company of Kenya Limited with a total of 1,699,279 shares translating to 1.08%;
Standard Chartered nominees A/c 9230 with a total of 1,037,875 shares translating to 0.66%;
Old Mutual Life Assurance Limited with a total of 857,217 shares translating to 0.55%;
Kenya Reinsurance Corporation Ltd with a total of 798,600 shares translating to 0.51%;
SCB A/c Pan African unit-linked FD with a total of 687,788 shares translating to 0.44%;
Standard Chartered nominees A/c 1256B with a total of 645,457 shares translating to 0.41%.
At first glance, this shareholding reflects a strong non-media interest in the NMG, and it seems rather obvious that these shareholders will be looking at a return on their investment in the form of profits derived from journalistic practices. From the interview findings, it was established that journalists indeed do feel pressured to protect the interests of the major shareholders such as Standard Chartered Bank, Jubilee Insurance and the Old Mutual Limited, which are major corporate organisations in Kenya.
The tension between commercial interests and journalistic ideals at the NMG
To establish the normative ideals that guide journalists as they make their daily decisions, we examined the ethical principles as outlined in the Code of Conduct for Journalism Practice in Kenya. The Code of Conduct for Journalism Practice in Kenya as entrenched in the Second Schedule of the Media Act 2007 governs the conduct and practice of all media practitioners in the country. We therefore sought to find out from the interview responses the extent to which journalists say they adhere to these ethical principles as they make their daily decisions and to what extent market pressures compromise their capacity to adhere to these ideals.
Most of the interviewed journalists admitted that ‘it is always at the back of their minds when they are handling a story about an affiliate company or a shareholder.’ This means that they have to be cautious how they approach such stories and sometimes it might mean ‘forgetting the story altogether’ even if it is in the public interest. These comments point to the fact that although the journalists are free to make rational choices about their work, their agency is largely compromised by the pressure to protect the owners’ interests (see Herman and Chomsky 2002; Shoemaker and Reese 1996). As one of the respondents put it, ‘if you are a journalist at the NMG, you just know that you can't touch some stories; you don't have to be told.’ This means that what journalists do, what they see as newsworthy and what they take for granted as the ‘way things are’ can be explained by the pressures, routines and constraints incorporated into the media structure (see Jansen 2010; Reese 2001) of the NMG.
From the responses, it was evident that owners’ and shareholders' interests do directly and indirectly influence the ethical decisions of journalists mainly through the appointment of the top executives of the company and the ‘silent policies’ put in place to protect owners' and shareholders' interests. As the findings show, at the NMG, journalists' autonomy is influenced by the fact that the main shareholder, the Aga Khan, appoints all the 16 members of the Board of Directors and the senior managers including the Chief Executive Officer. The analysis of the 2012 NMG Annual Report had shown that the Board of Directors consists of 16 members, none of whom is a trained journalist. The study sought to find out from the interviews how the members of the Board are appointed and the influence they have on journalists' decisions.
The interviewees observed that the senior managers (executive team) and the members of the Board are supposed to be the ‘eyes and ears’ of the Aga Khan, as some of the senior journalists interviewed put it. The Board of Directors may exert pressure on the top management, who in turn exerts pressure on individual journalists to promote the owners’ interests. This is how some of the interviewees summed up this internal influence:
Well, like in the case of NMG, the main shareholder is the Aga Khan with over 40% … and therefore you have to do as he wants … after all he is the one who directly picks the director/CEO and even the senior managers, so these people have to protect the business interest of the Aga Khan.
The board of directors comprises of 16 people all of whom are the Aga Khan's direct appointees and therefore they are there to fight for his interest … to be his eyes … If there is any negative story that is likely to jeopardize his business interests, then you will definitely expect some pressure to protect them.
And remember that these board of directors are also board of directors in other companies. For example our chairman and former CEO, Mr Kidero is also the chair of the Standard Chartered Bank … and again the Standard Chartered Bank is also one of the main shareholders! So you see, Standard Chartered is protected all through … and we can't say anything negative about it.
From these responses, it is evident that although journalists may not be directly coerced into protecting the owners' interests, media owners or their appointed top executives have the final say in what the organisation and the journalists do – a case of creating consent through hegemonic pressures on journalists (see Herman and Chomsky 2002). As the senior journalists interviewed observed:
the board is the custodian of the shareholders and the public and if they feel that any of the divisions of the NMG are doing anything that jeopardizes either the returns of the NMG or its sister companies, the board of directors exert pressure on the top management, which then trickles down to the individual journalists.
The internal influence from owners and shareholders can therefore be said to be through the pre-selection of right-thinking personnel in the top management and this personnel's internalisation of, and adaptation to, the constraints of ownership, the organisation and the market (see Herman and Chomsky 2002).
Internal influence also takes the form of ‘silent policies’ that, though not formal or explicit, journalists always keep in their minds. These ‘silent policies’ are often the result of conglomeration of the media group, or increased cross-interests in other companies and sectors. Journalists interviewed for this study indicated that there are some stories that ‘you cannot touch’ because they are about ‘our sister companies’ or that ‘you have to handle … with care.’ As Herman and Chomsky (2002) observe, mainstream media interlock with other institutional sectors in ownership, management and social circles, effectively circumscribing their ability to remain analytically detached from other dominant institutional sectors. This in effect results in self-censorship without any significant coercion (see Klaehn 2002, 2009). From the interviews with journalists at the NMG, it is clear that this process also plays itself out in the newsrooms of this group. This is how one of the interviewees explained this self-censorship necessitated by the ‘silent policies’:
I would say that this doesn't come to you as a reporter directly but you find that there is a silent policy where with time you come to learn the other businesses that have connections with the NMG and which you are supposed to either handle very cautiously or to leave alone.
The study aimed to find out if the non-media interests of the main shareholder and other shareholders in any way influence the decisions of journalists. There was consensus among the interviewees that the fact that the main shareholder, the Aga Khan, is also a major investor in the hospitality, education, health, banking and insurance industries both in Kenya and in the East African region where the NMG operates, creates a conflict of interest for the journalists and the NMG as a whole. The responses indicate that although the journalists may want to observe their professional code of conduct and do what is in the public interest, more often these ‘silent policies’ influence them either to ‘kill’ or ‘ignore’ a story that negatively touches on these sister companies or if they do publish it, they ‘cover it in a way that the shareholder's voice comes out strongly’ at the expense of public interest. This was expressed as follows in an interview response:
I would say through the editorial policy guidelines that are put in place by the owners and the top management because they dictate how you operate … so according to the policy guidelines there are things that you can do … things that you can report and things that you can't as a journalist at the NMG … so if you have this story and you are told that you can't publish because it goes against the editorial policy guidelines, then I think, in that way owners through these guidelines and the top management can influence your decision as a journalist at the lower level.
These comments show that although the journalists and editors retain agency to resist these pressures to protect owners' wealth, they largely engage in pre-emptive self-censorship, allowing only those stories that do not in any way endanger the owners' wealth and business interests. The owners' wealth in the form of these businesses integrates the NMG into the corporate market system, where the pressure to protect these business interests may take precedence over the journalists' agency and autonomy (see Curran 2000; Herman and Chomsky 2002; Zollmann 2009). Most of the journalists also seemed to agree that it is impossible to separate the profit motive and the public interest motive in a commercial media venture such as the NMG. The responses resonate with Golding and Murdock's (1973) view that the media are first and foremost commercial enterprises, despite claims that they are central to democratic debate in the public sphere.
Although self-censorship may be considered a form of journalistic agency (see Jansen 2010), the fact that this self-censorship at the NMG results in either suppressing or ignoring some stories to protect owners’ interests, does raise ethical issues. It is evident from the responses that in most cases, these structural constraints on journalists to protect owners' interests are implicit, hence they are not readily available for direct observation. Although journalists may accurately state that no one told them to suppress or ignore a story, such self-policing is more dangerous than direct censorship, in particular because outsiders (the public) are often not aware that anything has taken place (see Klaehn 2009; Reese 2001; Zollmann 2009). Whether this pressure is implicit or explicit, the self-interested nature of commercial considerations can be seen to clash with the media ethical ideals of independence, fairness, balance and ‘objectivity’.
The respondents also pointed out that the profit orientation of the Group does influence the ethical decisions of journalists. They observed that to the media owners and the shareholders, the media is a business and therefore the journalists are supposed to be in the business of maximising returns for the shareholders. This means that sometimes journalists at the NMG have to focus deliberately on stories that are likely to bring in the money rather than reporting on what they may consider to be in the public interest. This compromises their role as journalists, which they described as doing ‘what is in the public interest’. A refrain running through the responses was articulated by one interviewee in this way: ‘You always have it at the back of your mind that there are shareholders’ interests to protect.’ Most of the interviewees cited the ‘silent policies’ as the key guidelines on what is the ‘right thing’ to do as a journalist working for the NMG. With time, the journalists internalise these ‘silent policies’ so much so that when they make a decision, it seems the ‘natural thing to do’ (see Herman and Chomsky 2002; Jansen 2010).
Conclusion
This study has established that the most common conflict of interest in the new commercialised media environment at the NMG arises from the journalists' responsibility to guard and promote the owners' interests and the desire to adhere to the normative ideals as outlined in the Code of Conduct. The interviewees unanimously observed that since the media is a business with owners who expect returns and profits, the most practical thing for the individual journalist would be to look for a way to balance the commercial interests of the owners with the journalist's responsibility to promote the public interest. Most of them acknowledged that, sometimes, commercial interests may not necessarily be in the public interest, and most of the time, if there is a conflict of interest between the commercial interest and the public interest, the commercial interest takes precedence. The capacity of the journalists to report accurately and fairly on events of the day – ideals considered to be foundational to media ethics – is therefore constrained by the necessity to protect the interests of these corporate companies closely related to the NMG as well as the shareholders' interests. Market censorship through ‘silent policies’ to protect owners' and shareholders' wealth at the NMG in Kenya can therefore be seen as a way of muzzling the journalists' freedom to promote and protect public interest.