The Media Council of Kenya(MCK) released a report on Friday June 24, indicating how different media houses have been covering different presidential candidates and campaigns of the August 9 general elections between April and early June.
The report focused on 17 Presidential candidates who presented themselves for clearance at IEBC.
Within the period, MCK established that; reporting in mainstream media and community radio stations, in both national and regional politics, was biased favoring regional politics.
The council noted that Kass FM , broadcasting in Kalenjin dialect, only invited guests from United Democratic Alliance between March 28- April 1,2022, Ramogi focused on politics related to Raila Odinga, ODM and Azimio, Ene FM in Ukambani focused on Kalonzo Musyoka and One Kenya Alliance while Anguo FM in Taita Taveta solely interviewed governor Granton Samboja and not any other gubernatorial aspirant in the county.
Raila enjoyed coverage across all media platforms at 58.709 % followed by William Ruto at 36%, Jimi Wanjigi 2% while the rest of the candidates’ publicity volumes was below 0%.
The former prime minister also leads in coverage among the presidential candidates that were cleared to vie in the coming general elections.
In Radio, Raila was given a total of over 865,000 seconds, Ruto received 549,338 seconds, George Wajackoya 1,750 and David Mwaure 224 seconds. In TV the candidates received 2.4 million seconds, 1.2 million, 19267 and 283 respectively.
A similar trend was witnessed in print with Mwaure receiving completely zero coverage.
Raila beat Ruto and the rest of the presidential candidates in the number of stories on popular dailies and Newspapers including The standard, The Star, Nation among others with the Kenya Kwanza presidential candidate, only beating him on Asian Weekly and the Standard on Saturday. The case was the same on Radio stations and Ruto only beat Raila in Emo Radio.
Raila also had more stories in the TV segment. MCK however established that Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza was also given more coverage after complaining about the media being biased against him.
“However, overall – Raila still leads in media space consumption. Radio remains king in promoting diversity in coverage. 95.8 percent of coverage on presidential candidates during the week,” MCK said in the report
The same was also witnessed when it came to presidential running mates with Martha Karua enjoying more coverage across all platforms.
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