The press in Kenya operates under freedoms guaranteed in Article 79 of that country's constitution, written in part by former Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Churches and religious institutions, which are many and diverse in Kenya, enjoy freedoms granted in the same document not unlike those written into the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But press coverage of religion is affected by the same quandaries that cause many young Kenyans to regard legal guarantees as rhetorical disguises for corruption bred of greed and treachery at every level of the society. Reporters are frequently handed either an actual envelope containing money or given an equivalent small favor.
Editors understand that such favors are given, and often expect a percentage themselves.
One young reporter told me that, despite his intentions to refuse these handouts, he did in fact accept them because returning to the newsroom empty-handed would mean no further assignments. If media coverage follows the shillings, it's not in the direction of religion. Leaders of the Catholic and Protestant churches, Kenya's leading religious movements, are less likely to provide envelopes than political figures, for the simple reason that they lack access to the public purse, which provides much discretionary funding for partisan politics throughout the region. Furthermore, the churches do not depend on positive press coverage to achieve their agenda. So with neither the wherewithal nor the incentive to ink the presses with TKK, they must be content, on the normal news day, with inside pages below the fold.