The Communication Act

I did my internship between December 2008 and Feb 2009, finally got my invite to the blog just as i am about to finish doing my report. I was working for Kenya Film Censorship Board (KFCB) it is a department in the Ministry of Information and communication in Kenya. Although the department has been in existence since we got independence, it only became functional just over a year ago. therefore it is still growing and is soon to become a parastatal.

Working there was quite fun and emotional sometimes. At the time when i begun working, the parliament had passed a new bill for the communication sector (Kenya communication amendment Act 2008). it had caused quite a stir in the whole country as the media had termed it as bad and as a way of the government trying to gain control over the media. As a result the media decided to black out the government when the president finally assented to the bill on Jan 2009.

Before i started working, i totally hated the bill. i had not read it yet, all i knew about it was from word of mouth and obviously what the media was telling the country the act was all about. they said that the act will give the state power to raid media houses and control the distribution of content. It also gives the government the right to:

• penalize media infractions with heavy fines and prison terms
• sole discretion in granting broadcast licenses
  
• control of programme content and broadcasts.

I thought it was unfair since the media is the communication between the government and the people. Wouldn't the state then take this rules to their advantage and the media forced to give wrong information? Anyway, the first day at work my boss who was the CEO of the company asked for my opinions about the bill. So i asked if him if he supported it or opposed and ofcourse he did support it, given the fact that he works for the government. i told him i opposed and gave reasons why.

He was amused because i had so much to say and yet i had not yet read it. So he handed me a copy asked me to read it and we'd talk later. i was amazed at how the media had fooled us. of course the communication act is not perfect but i thought it had more pro's as it it did with the con's. The English was so hard to understand and the PRO kept laughing at me because half the time i had to read it out loud to be able to understand. it was all in English law. I shared an office with the PRO so that we could work together.

Our work was to read the sections of the bill that would concern KFCB and start working on how we would implement it. KFCB generally deals with censorship of cinemas, plays, posters and licensing of all video shops and libraries. With the communication act now put as a law, KFCB is required to carry it's responsibilities to all the media in the country whereas before they could not.

Melissa
LUCT Campus