Albert Gachiri Speaks Out on the Karume Saga and Whether He Really Was Fired from NTV
One of the biggest media goofs of the year took place in February 2012 when one of the leading media stations in the country broke news on its social media platforms that a seasoned Kenyan politician had passed on. The media house was forced to rescind its posts on Facebook and on Twitter following clarifications that the information was false.
This was of course not before some other media houses followed suit with ‘inspired’ updates of their own with even global information source Wikipedia handing politician Njenga Karume what was then a premature death in his descriptive page.
NTV Kenya came out apologetic over the mis-information following a severe backlash from the public as well as leaders in the country over what was termed as irresponsible journalism. The fingers were then pointed at the award winning journalist Albert Gachiri who was the man behind the update and the editor on duty that Saturday morning. What preceded those actions was Gachiri losing his job, a fate which he willingly bore.
Up until the Media Council of Kenya published a story briefly alluding to him in the latest issue of The Media Observer. On it, under an article titled ‘Integrity in Journalism’ the case of the afforementioned mishap was brought up as a case study of what NOT to do in cases of online journalism.
Albert came out strongly in the latest post on his blog titled ‘Victim or Villain. Fired Or Just Tired. Why I left NTV’, saying that he bore the brunt and suffered in silence, despite the fact that he felt he had been used as a sacfricial lamb considering that he alleges the ‘tip off’ for the story had come from an editor senior to him. He goes on to say that this development may be detrimental to his professional career and that the Media Council had not saught his opinion before publishing the issue.
