Deputy President William Ruto's campaign secretariat has bashed the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) after releasing a report detailing that journalists preferred covering former Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, of Azimio la Umoja.
Speaking at the William Samoei Ruto (WSR) Command Centre in Westlands on Friday, July 15, the WSR Presidential Secretariat Director of Communications, Hussein Mohamed, alleged the media regulatory body of bias in its report, further stating that MCK did not provide data to prove its claims.
Hussein asked the MCK to focus on its duty of regulating the media space, further asking its leadership to avoid releasing reports that are not factual.
Further, he asked the regulatory body to poof that its report was assembled following a robust research.
"Reports have shown the coverage the other team is enjoying. It is interesting, funny and unbelievable that the MCK did not see a problem with that.
"Without any report or statistics, they said that the numbers have changed and with an obsession with polls, the MCK went ahead and did a poll on which campaigns journalists would like to cover. Really? Is that what you are supposed to do?" wondered Hussein.
The former Citizen TV anchor also questioned why the MCK was not vocal when journalists are assaulted during Azimio events.
"They said that journalists are not comfortable with covering Kenya Kwanza over a misunderstanding at the NDC. The same MCK complained when journalists were assaulted at ODM headquarters. Are they being fair?"
On the presidential debates scheduled for next week, Hussein stated that it was up to the candidates to decide whether they will attend the debates or not.
"We gave an advisory to the candidates and they will make a decision based on that advisory," he stated.
On the other hand, United Democratic Alliance (UDA) Secretary General, Veronica Maina, stated that the party also collected data on media coverage for both coalitions and will release a report on the same in the near future.
"We are doing monitoring from this center and on day to day basis to tell how many minutes each faction is getting so that we do not make allegations without data. We hope the journalist can do the right thing in the remaining days," Maina stated.
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