Azimio la Umoja camp has discredited Deputy President William Ruto's claim that he was not receiving fair coverage from Citizen TV, its sister broadcasters, as well as the Daily Nation.
Speaking exclusively to Kenyans.co.ke, Raila Odinga's campaign spokesperson Makau Mutua disputed the claim arguing that Kenya Kwanza, which is led by the DP, actually received more coverage at Citizen TV.
To make his point, Mutua argued that the Azimio camp had done its own analysis of the coverage and found out that Ruto received an extra two-minute coverage as opposed to the claim contained in a letter authored by the Director of Communications in the Deputy President's campaign, Hussein Mohammed.
"We have done our own analysis of media coverage and what we have seen is that one of the stations accused of being biased actually gave them two more minutes. That is Citizen. I think they should just go and do their math.
"The coverage is even and is a bias towards UDA which actually gives us a little bit of a heartache. We are not complaining about media coverage and they cover things that are newsworthy," stated Makau Mutua.
He further challenged the Kenya Kwanza team to produce evidence supporting their claim and argued that they had resolved to blame games since they could not shoot straight.
"I just want to commend the Kenyan media for just being professional in covering this campaign. I saw a letter written by Hussein Mohammed who is a spokesperson for the other side and I think the letter concerned professional debate and why they would not participate
"Sometimes when I listen to the Deputy President or I listen to the people on that side of the aisle, I get the impression that that is a gang that could not shoot straight. They can produce evidence of bias instead of making frivolous statements that do not make sense," he added.
In his letter, Mohammed explained that Kenya Kwanza was feeling dejected after the stations had breached the statutory terms of their licences as well as constitutional freedoms through the unequal allocation of coverage, and negative framing of the UDA presidential candidate and his associates.
The affected stations included Citizen TV, Inooro TV, and Inooro FM.
Independent analysis carried by Kenyans.co.ke on Saturday, May 5, however, showed that Citizen TV covered Raila more than Ruto in the two weeks between May 20 and June 3, 2022. Raila was accorded 300.65 minutes (57.77 per cent) while Ruto had 219.82 minutes (42.23 per cent).
The total amount of time in the last two weeks totaled 520.47 minutes.
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