Role of the media in Kenya's post election violence

Via Richard Sambrook who alerts the world to a report comissioned by BBC World service looking at whether the media were to blame for the recnt violence in Kenya following the elections at the end of last year.

It follows comments by the Kenyan information minister who at the time said

The violence after the announcement of the polls was due to the polarity in the media, especially vernacular media which were turned into political tools.”

However the report concludes that

the crisis demonstrates that a free and plural media are as much an answer to Kenya's democratic deficit as they are a problem.

In particular,the

role of the local language media during the crisis was the product of a chaotic regulatory policy and the lack of training - especially of talk show hosts, whose programmes provided the platform for most of the hate speech.

and

local language radio played a role in calming tensions as well as inflaming them, and could be a powerful mechanism for reconciliation.