Coverage of Organic Farming Practices by Kenya’s Leading Newspapers

Abstract

This paper focuses on the coverage of organic farming practices by Kenya’s leading newspapers: The Daily Nation and The Standard. The study is anchored in an interpretivist research philosophy, which is qualitative in nature. The study targeted the two newspapers' weekend pull-outs (Saturday) on ‘Seeds of Gold’ and ‘Smart Harvest’. The coverage of ‘organic farming’ content in the two newspapers was determined by examining how much space (in terms of percentage) was dedicated to an A3 page of a newspaper. Analysis of results has been done using descriptive statistics. It was found out that whereas the two newspaper pull-outs were expected to highlight and report on organic farming, the content covered in six to eight-page articles was less than 25.0% with the rest being sponsored articles by pesticides and other inorganic farming organisations. Considering the two pull-outs are expected to inform the public (consumers and farmers) on matters about organic farming, they did not do so by having much of the information in sponsored articles. Only 9.4% of the articles received whole-page coverage. The debates on organic farming rarely featured in the two newspaper articles despite their wide readership around the country. It is therefore recommended that the two newspapers should give prominence to organic farming information as part of fulfilling ethical reporting systems towards addressing climate health challenges and attainment of the United Nations sustainable development goals by 2030.