"It is fairly informative how journalists view their roles in the Kenyan society. Kenyan journalists found it most important to report things the way they are, to educate the audience and to promote tolerance and diversity. The relevance of these roles was fairly undisputed among the interviewed journalists as the relatively low standard deviations (s=.75, s=.77, and s=.88 respectively) indicate. It is particularly noteworthy the notion of reporting things as they are and promoting tolerance. About a decade ago, the Kenyan media was perceived to have contributed to the spate of political violence that engulfed the country. The media has strenuously struggled to shed off that perception. Further, journalists tend to see themselves as objective and therefore it is little surprising that straight reporting scored highly on the list. Other roles with a standard deviation score less than s=1.0 included letting people express their views (81.1%, s=.89) and telling stories about the world (78.9%, s=.98). Providing analysis of current affairs was considered an important role by 81.7 percent of the respondents. The other roles, in their order of percentage scores and possibly relative importance, are indicated in Table 1 below. It is instructive what Kenyan journalists considered less important roles: conveying a positive image of political leadership (31.8%) and being an adversary of the government (36.1%). Nearly all roles related to politics are at the bottom of the table. This is a unique finding, as Kenyan media is often accused of being overly political. The headlines and lead stories are often all about politics. It is noteworthy that journalism in Kenya can sometimes be fairly adversarial in relation to the government. Given the promulgation of a new constitution nearly seven years ago, with clauses protective of media freedom, there is often a boldness in Kenyan media which is unique compared to the experiences of neighboring countries.
Roles supportive of a development agenda scored somewhere in the middle of the table. This is an important and surprising perception as well. Kenya is a developing country and it would have been natural to expect that development was a default role for the media. But development-related responses scored 78.8 percent and 69.2 percent respectively. While this is still a high score, it is not among the top considerations of the media." (Journalistic roles, pages 3-4)