Last week, news about Kenzo beating up a journalist, Kasuku, made rounds like a problem. Like any normal human being who has been born and bred in a civilised society, I condemn any form of violence. I must say Eddy Kenzo came in as a shock to me because he has hardly been involved in such cases. Even when jokes have continuously been made about him and the fact that he cannot speak proper English, it did not provoke him or shake up his personality to the point of fighting.
So why do it now when he is almost at the peak of his career? Especially when it involves a journalist? Well, I have said this time and again, that like any other profession; good journalism too has a set of ethics that govern the vocation. This business of people depending on rumours to sound relevant just does not make sense. So its alleged that this dude is gay, what better way to bring out that question to him than to first conduct research, get all the evidence, present it and then task him to give his side of the story?
Also, how one puts their points across might sometimes define the kind of response they will get, especially if it crosses the borders. Some people have been branded prostitutes, alcoholics, party animals, hopeless, name it without any evidence to the attached allegations. And in the long run, they have to spend the rest of their lives defending themselves over every false thing that has been written or said about them, simply because one journalist misused their platform.
Unfortunately, we are in the era where “rumour journalism” “desktop journalism” is in most cases given priority. And in other ugly situations, we have a bunch of people who claim to be journalists when they are not competent in the language they practice their trade in. Surprisingly it is such people who want to fly so high and try to emulate journalists on the international scene, forgetting that even when reporting on the seemingly most irrelevant of celebrities, research is conducted and that is why we see so many of our international celebrities getting a full dose of the paparazzi and all sorts of stories (with facts), following them to where ever they go.
So isn’t it funny that with the limited resources here, some of these scribes try so hard to play with one’s life and make or break it? However that does not imply that beating up or getting aggressive in anyway is the solution. I mean in different situations we have seen artistes like Bebe Cool, utilising avenues like social media to state their points out loud.
Question is, for how long shall they sustain giving responses in such a manner especially in a world where the rumour mill is rolling as fast as lightening? I think it is about time our celebrities invested in publicists to manage their image such that even when a journalist takes the false line, they cannot make lack of a source of information as an excuse.
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