Citizen TV In Hot Soup Again Over Azimio Coverage

Garissa Township Member of Parliament-elect, Aden Duale, has trained his guns on Citizen TV on what he termed as biased coverage of the Azimio la Umoja Presidential petition filed at the Supreme Court.

In a statement on Wednesday, August 24, Duale claimed that the Royal Media Services (RMS) station is investing in more resources in giving airtime to Azimio coalition leader, Raila Odinga and his running mate, Martha Karua, over William Ruto of Kenya Kwanza who was declared president-elect on Monday, August 15.

He accused the station of failing on some of its grand stages ranging from pre-election campaigns and opinion polls and warned that the station risks a major embarrassment at the apex court.

"The way Citizen TV has invested in the Azimio Petition you would think they are co-judges of the Supreme Court. You failed with biased campaigns, and biased opinion polls and now you will fail at Supreme Court.

"You have not learnt. When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!" he tweeted.

According to the former leader of the majority in the National Assembly, the opinion polls that preceded the elections that projected a round-one victory for Raila were propagated in a way that it caused dissatisfaction amongst Kenyans.

Duale is a close ally of Ruto, who along with his team, has accused the station of favouring their opponents instead of them.

The station's owner, Samuel Kamau Macharia, also known popularly as S.K Macharia, was added to Raila's presidential campaign team, having accompanied Odinga to major meetings, including the Mount Kenya Foundation which had played a big role in supporting his presidential bid.

It was not just Citizen TV that has been accused of bias against Ruto's team.

A previous Media Council of Kenya (MCK) report that revealed how 49 per cent feel safer working with Raila while Ruto received 31 per cent backing forced the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) to wage war against them.

"All we want them to do is ensure objectivity. We have been in the media, we are still journalists and we are asking our colleagues, especially the media companies and owners, we are not saying you must cover us. We are saying this is public information, you're doing this for the public good.

"If you have decided to give one side more coverage then please tell the viewers what you are doing than trying to say you are objective and you're not and the data and statistics show you are not. If the MCK wants to talk about new data please show us the report, don't just quote a statement and there's no report," said William Samoei Ruto (WSR) Presidential Secretariat Director of Communications, Hussein Mohamed, who was once one of Citizen TV's journalists.