If a story happens at home local journalists are expected to cover it better than foreigners. This truism didn’t hold true with the murder of Agnes Wanjiru, a young mother of a five-month-old-baby, in Nanyuki, nine years ago. Sunday Times of London and British Sky News journalists scooped local journalists.
In journalism, a scoop is a story reported exclusively by one journalist or news organization. When a journalist manages to get a major story before other journalists, he is said to have “scooped” the competition. Scooping the competition is good for the journalist’s ego and institutional pride.
Sky News journalists reported exclusively on the death of Wanjiru in 2012. They quoted sources who claimed they had seen Wanjiru at the Lion’s Court Lodge in the company of British soldiers. They also obtained documents from Social Watch Kenya, a human rights organisation, detailing some of the witnesses’ allegations.
The Sunday Times delivered the Big Scoop last Sunday. After being on the trail of the suspected British soldiers for months, the British quality newspaper published “the whodunit” story. It was frontpage news that was picked up by other newspapers. Headlined “Soldier ‘confessed he killed Kenyan mother’”, the story was accompanied by a picture of Wanjiru and a photoshopped figure of a British soldier.
The newspaper’s podcast series — “Stories of our Times” — also featured the gripping human-interest story. It gave the story a depth never attempted by the Kenyan media. The 35-minute-podcast, hosted by broadcast journalist Manveen Rana, includes the voices of Sunday Times news reporter Hannah Al-Othman, editor David Collins, and Esther, Wanjiru’s niece.
There’re no good reasons why Kenyan journalists were scooped by foreigners. Had they done their work diligently they, and not the Sunday Times , would have owned this important story. Let’s assume they couldn’t have reached the suspected British soldiers. That would still not be an excuse; they could have asked their British counterparts to pursue angles they couldn’t pursue locally. Such cooperation is common among journalists.
It was “an open secret” that a British soldier had killed Wanjiru, which the Kenya media could have exposed if it had been more enterprising. On Tuesday, this week, two Nation reporters — James Murimi and Nicholas Komu — did a fantastic job documenting the cover-up (“Kenyan authorities accused of aiding British cover-up of Wanjiru’s murder ,” Daily Nation , October 26, 2021).
What their story didn’t say, however, is that it wasn’t a perfect cover-up. At each stage of covering up there were windows of opportunity for investigative journalism. This includes interviewing relatives, friends of Wanjiru present at the hotel where she was killed, hotel staff and examining the hotel guest register.
The greatest window of opportunity was the leads given in the inquest report. The magistrate presiding over the 2019 inquest said broken glass and blood were found in the room Wanjiru was last seen entering in the company of the two British soldiers. The magistrate concluded: “I have formed the opinion that Agnes was murdered by British soldiers. It may have been one or two. But what is certain is that it was British soldiers because they were dressed in their uniform.”
The Kenya media overlooked, or let pass, all those opportunities for journalistic investigation. Indeed, it’s apparent from the coverage of the murder that it was treated as if it were a “filler story” — a story to fill space between more important stories in the newspaper.
Failing to report the Wanjiru murder with the seriousness it deserved went contrary to the NMG editorial policy, which states that the news organisation has an obligation “to protect individuals against injustices or neglect committed by public authorities and institutions, private concerns and others.”
On Wednesday, the Daily Nation published an editorial titled “Justice for Agnes Wanjiru ”. It condemns the cover-up, which it calls “our national shame.” The editorial should have been written nine years ago when the cover-up was happening right in front of the journalists’ very eyes. But it’s, all the same, good atonement for past reportorial failures.
The Public Editor is an independent news ombudsman who handles readers’ complaints on editorial matters including accuracy and journalistic standards. Email: [email protected] . Call or text 0721989264.
