Uasin Gishu County Woman representative Gladys Shollei on Monday blasted NTV while on the floor of Parliament for misreporting during President William Ruto's State of the Nation address.
Shollei, who is the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, faulted the media outlet for misleading Kenyans and spreading 'fake news' to belittle Kenya Kwanza’s performance.
While sharing her input during a discussion on the President’s State of the Nation, Shollei said NTV's analysis was wrong.
“I want to direct my attention to unpatriotic media houses in this country and particularly NTV which recently attempted to wrongly analyse (the President’s State of the Nation Address),” she stated.
She countered the narrative that the government was not doing enough for its citizens saying that the shilling strengthened against the dollar due to government efforts.
“Those media houses should tell us where they are getting their statistics and where the source of their information is.
“They can use their investigative journalism to go to the stores to find out that we now have 47 million bags of maize and 8.8 million bags of beans and 10.4 million bags of wheat in our reserves,” she challenged.
On Friday, November 22, Government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura also responded to a fact-checking analysis of President Ruto's State of the Nation Address that was done by NTV.
The media house had conducted a verification exercise into statistics shared by Ruto, rendering a verdict that some of the president's claims were false.
According to NTV, Ruto's claims on the reduction of expenditure from 2022 were false. Similarly, Ruto's claims about a 14 per cent increase in milk production were also found to be false.
However, Mwaura countered and said the publication's calculations on milk production were incorrect and that the information shared was misleading. "Their stated source, the May 2024 Economic Survey, clearly indicates that the figures they cited for 2023 were only provisional. Consequently, their fact-check of the President’s State of the Nation Address is thus incorrect, misleading and unwarranted," he asserted.
In her attack, Shollei maintained that Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC) has increased milk processing to 220,000 litres a day up from 100,000 litres.
“I dare those media houses to tell us if they have any milk and how much they sell for to KCC?” she asked.
“As we look at the President’s State of the Nation report, it is important we call out those unpatriotic Kenyans and unpatriotic media houses who are selling toxic, negative narratives and selling stories of doom and hopelessness," he said.
