Kenyan journalism? An historical reflection on imperialism of the Western journalism template in the Kenyan media

Abstract

The history of Kenyan media has been shaped by a litany of forces including social, economic, political, structural and technological forces, among others. But, one of the under-explored narratives in the shaping of the Kenyan journalism, and by extension the practice in East Africa, is the history of the colonial antecedent and industrial revolution or the rise of global capitalism at the turn of the twentieth century; and how that informed the setting up of western models of journalism in East Africa. This conceptual (theoretical) paper reflects on these forces through three epochs: the preindependence European media, the Indian press and the native press, by using the Kenyan context to explore the historical accounts of development of the media in the region.