Kenya's Maligned African Press: A Reassessment.

Kenya's dozen or more newspapers and 50 news sheets edited and published by Africans in the turbulent 1945-52 preindependence period were condemned as irresponsible, inflammatory, antiwhite, and seditious by the Kenya colonial government, and this characterization has been accepted by many scholars and journalists, including Africans. There is substantial evidence to show that the newspapers and even the mimeographed news sheets continued to argue for redress of specific African grievances as well as for changes in social, economic, and political policies with responsible arguments and in moderate language up until the Emergency Declaration proscribed the African publications in October of 1952. This reassessment of Kenya's African press is based in part on examination of government records and interviews with some African journalists of the period under study. The primary sources are clippings and tear sheets from the African press collected by Kenya's Criminal Investigation Division. The material, along with comments by colonial officials at the time, shows that the African press of Kenya was by any reasonable standard responsible and moderate much of the time. (Author/RB)