LARRY MADOWO LASHES OUT AT KENYANS ON ‘TELLING CNN’

Quite a storm was caused this past weekend, not just at the Machakos Country Bus Station, but throughout the country with a spill over effect in the United States of America. The context was the deadly grenade attack that claimed upto 6 lives, injuring scores of others, the culprits are yet to be charged and Kenyans (on and off social media) are angry with Atlanta, USA based Cable News Network (CNN) But why?

Read more on what #SomeOneTellCNN means here >>

The blaring headline that adorned the news piece on the CNN broadcast delivered by reporter Jonathan Mann, starkly bore the words ‘VIOLENCE IN KENYA’ and it seems the writing (or wording) was indeed on the wall.

This sparked a war of terminologies with bloggers such as Kachwanya drawing definitions as to whether CNN was indeed at fault with the wording for the report.

NTV Journalist Larry Madowo has gone ahead and lashed out at what he calls ‘mass information being spread on Twitter since 2006’ in his latest blog post titled On #SomeoneTellCNN and the fallacy of Mass Hysteria.

In the post he goes ahead to again define what ‘Violence’ is and back the editors at CNN for using the headline, saying by its very definition, the station was right.

Larry goes ahead and writes:

‘Why didn’t the thousands of Kenyans on Twitter agitating for CNN to apologize bother to look up the dictionary meaning of the word? Because it was a popular revolt, and there was no room for divergent voices.’

One of the comments on the piece however sought to bring things into perspective, with one Timothy Miano asking:

‘I wonder if the said CNN used the same banner after 9/11: ‘Violence in USA’. Larry, let them get their stories in the correct context.’

What do you think about #SomeoneTellCNN and #CNNApologize ?