Kenya media rejects threat over licences

Nairobi. The three leading media companies have protested over a threat by the Communications Commission of Kenya to take unspecified action against them for going off-air on Monday night.

The threat by CCK to take “regulatory action” against the Nation Media Group, The Standard Group and Royal Media Services, apparently on instructions from the government, was the culmination of poor relations between the Jubilee government and the media.

Cancellation of broadcast licences and heavy fines are some of the punishments that CCK can impose.

But the three media houses have vowed to fight the threat by the regulator in court, saying, a series of actions by the government were bordering on denying them rights enshrined in the Constitution.

They argued that NTV, QTV, KTN and Citizen TV stations went off air on Monday night after the High Court dismissed their petition to delay migration from analogue to digital broadcast.

The ruling on the petition by Mr Justice David Majanja, they argued, also meant that the injunction orders they had secured were no longer in force.

The switch to digital frequencies was meant to take effect that night and broadcasters who failed to comply with the regulations would have faced fines. On Christmas eve, the government extended the switch-over to last night.

“On dismissal of the petition, against which my clients have gone to the Court of Appeal, the injunction orders in their favour lapsed. They simply had to comply with the law. This was the reason for the switch-off,” Mr Paul Muite, who is acting for the three media houses, said in a letter to CCK, which had asked the media houses to explain why action should not be taken against them.

CCK had claimed that the media houses’ decision to switch off their television channels had caused public anxiety and a perception that they had been closed down.

In its letter (above), the CCK warned that it could take “regulatory action” against the three media houses, which have the highest audiences in the country and the region.

Mr Muite argued that CCK’s letter was written at the direction of the Information and Communications Cabinet Secretary, Dr Fred Matiang’i.

In his reply (right), he said the government had breached provisions under Article 34 of the Constitution on the freedom of the media. “The Cabinet Secretary, when directing you to take disciplinary action against our clients, made it clear that the disciplinary action included cancellation of their existing licences,” he said.

The CCK wrote to the three media houses, accusing them of disrupting transmission of their daily programmes on the analogue platform.

By going off-air for more than three hours without informing the commission, the regulator warned that the media houses risked cancellation of their frequency licences.