EmploymentOfDoom by one Adede Owalla
NTV investigative journalist Dennis Okari , who prepared the investigative piece CertificatesOfDoom headed for greener pastures at BBC in April 2014 and as any other Journalist would dream , this was as great as it sound.
Okari went to London presumably as host of BBC’s “Focus on Africa” program of which according to him, he was going to fill the position left vacant after the demise of Ghanain Komla Dumor, who passed away a month earlier ( this was never a reality, he was taken in as a reporter).
After less than one year , the Journalist came back after realising that he was a ‘‘local cock which couldn’t crow in the city’’ . Being that he was used to the type of content processing where as Okari, his major work was presentation while other things like sourcing, editing and final polishing of the content was done by other different people. Okari is naturally lazy and wasn’t used to the system where he was involved on every stage of processing the content to be aired.
Okari was not in good terms with BBC Focus on Africa production and reporting team, especially Dayo Akwasi Sarpong and Stephane Mayoux both of whom described him as a proud person who was ‘‘not ready to learn the tactics of the game’’ . Within one week of his stint at BBC, he crossed hairs with fellow producer Damian Zane whom according to him preferred working with people like Muliro Telewa than him. This threatened his future at BBC being that Zane is very influential in the BBC management team.
At BBC , a journalist is held personally responsible for every f*ck he let go. This is different from NTV and other Kenyan media houses where the firms come in to take the burden when an employee messes up. Another thing, at BBC, you can’t be bribed to air an item aimed at defaming or exalting an individual or a firm. Anything that contravenes media ethics is unwarranted at BBC. Okari is used to making money out of the dark sides and however how much he was being paid at BBC, it couldn’t sum up to what he could gain from being paid to tarnish organisational or individual names at NTV.